Elena Rybakina seems to be struggling. She recently withdrew from the Korea Open which is the ninth time in 2024 that she has either retired from a match or withdrew from a tournament. The claim most of the time is an injury, though one might rightly wonder if more is afoot. And that “more” might not be very good at all.

The reason is that before the US Open, an event in which Rybakina withdrew before her second-round match, she split with her coach of five years, Stefano Vukov. We do not know yet exactly what prompted the move, but we know that Vukov is now no longer on the approved list of coaches for the WTA.

That would imply the coach has done something extraordinarily bad. That is, of course, just a guess, but one can do the math. For years, Vukov was approved, but after his recent split with Rybakina, he no longer was.

It is easy to think of what might have gone wrong, but we also should not jump to conclusions and hope for the best. Still, tennis fans likely know once the news comes out about Vukov’s ban, the details won’t be pretty.

Former WTA No. 1 Kim Clijsters was recently on the Served with Andy Roddick podcast and gave her own informed thoughts on Rybakina’s situation. There is probably nothing – good or bad – that Clijsters did not see when she was on the tour. Players talk. And players talk to former high-level players as well.

The three-time US Open champion might not yet know what happened with Rybakina and Vukov, but she does have a feeling the news won’t be good. Plus, it will be much worse for Vukov than Rybakina.

Clijsters said on the podcast, “I think there’s definitely – more will come out. He was at the (US) Open. (Vukov) had a credential. He was there. It’s like weird… It’s all a guess to everybody besides some people who are part of the organization. I think we’ll find out more in the future about it. But at the moment, I don’t think – it’s not going to be anything good.”

Let’s hope for the best, but that is probably a false hope. Long-term, let’s just hope that Rybakina is fine.

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