Leylah Fernandez Wins Her First Ever WTA 500 Title at DC Open

Posted on July 28, 2025 by Tom Castaneda

Leylah Fernandez has claimed the biggest title of her career…

The 22-year-old half-Ecuadorian Canadian tennis player won the DC Open on Sunday with the help of a terrific backhand, some superb returning and energy courtesy of Shake Shack‘s burgers and fries.

The left-handed Fernandez, who is ranked 36th, wrapped up a big week of tight matches with a lopsided victory, defeating Anna Kalinskaya 6-1, 6-2 in the final.

Fernandez earned her fourth singles trophy — all have come at hard-court tournaments — and first at a WTA 500 event.

She came quite close to a Grand Slam championship as a teenager at the 2021 US Open, making it all the way to the final in New York before losing to Emma Raducanu.

There almost was a rematch in Washington, but Kalinskaya eliminated Raducanu in the semifinals Saturday.

Fernandez took quite a journey through the women’s bracket.

She needed 2 hours, 19 minutes to oust No. 1 seed Jessica Pegula, last year’s US Open runner-up, in three sets in the second round. She then needed 2 hours, 20 minutes to beat Taylor Townsend in the quarterfinals and 3 hours, 12 minutes for a three-tiebreaker victory over No. 3 seed Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, in the semifinals.

After each of the last two, Fernandez and her father, who is also her coach, opted for Shake Shack.

“We got burgers, hot dog, cheese fries — everything that an athlete should not eat before a match, but it did the trick,” Fernandez said about what she ate after the Townsend match. “It gave me the right nutrients to recover from the cramps and get ready for the next round.”

Following the Rybakina marathon, Fernandez said she and her father “were messaging, and I was, like, ‘OK, what do you want to eat tonight?’ We both answered at the same time: burgers. … That was kind of my diet for the whole week.”

It worked: This was the first title for Fernandez since October 2023 at the Hong Kong Open.

Plus, she arrived in Washington with a losing record this season and hadn’t won more than two matches at the same tournament since last November.

“I have gone through so many different challenges this week. It just has made me stronger, in a way, that if I can get through this week — through the cramps, through the long matches, through the heat, the humidity — I can get through anything,” Fernandez said. “So I was just very happy that I got to not only push myself physically through the limits, but also mentally. So that kind of will help me hopefully for future tournaments.”

Against the 48th-ranked Kalinskaya, who hadn’t dropped a set until Sunday, Fernandez saved the only break point she faced while breaking four times.

One key: Fernandez claimed 10 of the 12 points when Kalinskaya hit a second serve. Another: Kalinskaya, a 26-year-old Russian who is 0-3 in tour finals, finished with 24 unforced errors and just nine winners.

“Amazing fight this week,” Kalinskaya told Fernandez. “You truly deserve it.”

Leylah Fernandez Defeats Elena Rybakina to Reach DC Open Final

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Tom Castaneda

Leylah Fernandez will be playing for her first WTA title of the season…

The 22-year-old half-Ecuadorian Canadian professional tennis play, the runner-up at the 2021 US Open, hit 12 aces and picked up her second victory of the week at the DC Open against a top-20 opponent by beating 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina 6-7 (2), 7-6 (3), 7-6 (3) across 3 hours, 16 minutes in the semifinals on Saturday.

Fernandez will face Anna Kalinskaya, who is seeking the first of her career when they meet each other in the final of the hard-court DC Open.

Kalinskaya needed less than half as much time to eliminate Emma Raducanu 6-4, 6-3 with the help of 14 backhand winners in the other women’s semifinal.

It was Raducanu who defeated Fernandez for the championship at Flushing Meadows four years ago.

Both finalists are unseeded. Canada’s Fernandez is ranked 36th; Russia’s Kalinskaya, 26, is ranked 48th.

Fernandez, who got past top-seeded Jessica Pegula earlier in the week, owns three titles. Sunday’s matchup will be her seventh career final.

Beatriz Haddad Maia Advances to Fourth Round at Wimbledon for First Time

Posted on July 9, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Beatriz Haddad Maia has advanced to the Round of 16 for the first time at Wimbledon.

The 27-year-old Brazilian professional tennis player moved into the fourth round at the All England Club by besting Romania’s Sorana Cirstea 6-2, 6-2 on No. 3 Court on Saturday.

Haddad Maia came into the match behind in the head-to-head, with Cirstea having won four of their five prior meetings.

But this time, Haddad Maia perfectly mixed powerful hitting with outrageous defense to earn the victory in exactly 90 minutes — mere seconds before a two-hour rain delay hit the grounds.

Haddad Maia, who cracked the Top 10 for two weeks last month, won 80 percent of her first-serve points on the day. She also dominated when returning the Cirstea second serve, winning 15 of those 21 points, and turning that into five service breaks.

After not passing the second round in her first 11 Grand Slam main draws, Haddad Maia has now reached the second week at two consecutive majors. She broke her second-round barrier with a historic semifinal appearance at Roland Garros last month, only falling to eventual French Open champion Iga Swiatek.

She’ll face defending champion Elena Rybakina in the Round of 16.

Carlos Alcaraz Earns No. 1 Seed at Wimbledon

Posted on June 28, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Carlos Alcaraz is heading into the All England Club as the top seed…

The 20-year-old Spanish tennis player, not four-time defending champion Novak Djokovic was seeded No. 1 for Wimbledon on Wednesday, as expected, because the All England Club adhered to the ATP and WTA rankings.

Alcaraz overtook Djokovic atop the men’s standings on Monday. Djokovic hasn’t played since collecting his men’s record 23rd Grand Slam title at the French Open on June 11 and slid to No. 2, while Alcaraz rose one spot after winning a grass-court tuneup tournament at Queen’s Club on Sunday.

Djokovic has won the championship at Wimbledon each of the past four times it was held — and seven times overall — but he did not benefit from a ranking boost in 2022 because the ATP and WTA withheld all points to protest the All England Club’s decision to ban players from Russia and Belarus because of the invasion of Ukraine.

Those athletes are allowed to compete this year, and Russian player Daniil Medvedev is seeded No. 3 in the men’s field.

The draw to set up the singles brackets will be Friday. The tournament begins Monday.

Casper Ruud is No. 4 of the 32 men’s seeds, followed by Stefanos Tsitsipas, Holger Rune, Jannik Sinner, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe. Nick Kyrgios, the runner-up to Djokovic at Wimbledon a year ago, is seeded 31st.

Two-time Wimbledon champion Andy Murray is ranked 39th and is not seeded.

Swiatek has been ranked No. 1 since April 2022 and owns four Grand Slam titles, most recently at the French Open. She has never been past the fourth round at Wimbledon.

In the women’s field, Iga Swiatek is the No. 1 seed, while Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka.

Elena Rybakina, the 2022 women’s champion at the All England Club, is No. 3 among the women’s 32 seeds, followed by Jessica Pegula, Caroline Garcia, Ons Jabeur, Coco Gauff, Maria Sakkari, two-time champion Petra Kvitova and Barbora Krejcikova.

From 2002 to 2019, the All England Club based its seedings for the men’s draw on a formula that took into account results on grass at Wimbledon and elsewhere. But after that, the tournament opted to simply follow the rankings to determine all seeds.

Carlos Alcaraz Returns to No. 1 in ATP World Rankings, Expected to Earn No. 1 Seed at Wimbledon

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Carlos Alcaraz is officially back on top…

The 20-year-old Spanish tennis player has replaced Novak Djokovic at No. 1 in the ATP rankings, meaning he’s expected to have the top seeding at Wimbledon.

Alcaraz, the reigning US Open champion, is coming off the first grass-court title of his career, which he won on Sunday by beating Alex De Minaur in the final at Queen’s Club in London, and that helped him rise one spot from No. 2.

Djokovic, who picked up his men’s-record 23rd Grand Slam title at the French Open this month, chose not to play any tune-up tournaments on grass ahead of Wimbledon and slid down one place.

It is the sixth time the No. 1 ranking has switched in 2023, the most since it happened seven times in 2018.

Play begins at Wimbledon on Monday, July 3.

The All England Club will announce the men’s and women’s seeds Wednesday and is expected to simply follow the ATP and WTA rankings for those 32 berths in each 128-player singles draw. That would put Alcaraz and the leading woman, Iga Swiatek, in the top line of each bracket.

Swiatek remained at No. 1 — as she has for every week since first climbing to that position in April 2022 — on Monday, a little more than two weeks after she won the French Open for the third time. Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka kept her hold on No. 2, and defending Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina is at No. 3. Jessica Pegula moved up to No. 4, switching with new No. 5 Caroline Garcia.

Wimbledon’s seedings used to be based on a formula that took into account players’ recent success there and at other events contested on grass courts. But with only the rankings mattering now, there is the unusual situation of even last year’s results at the All England Club not mattering — because the ATP and WTA chose to withhold all rankings points that would have been earned at Wimbledon in 2022 to protest the club’s decision to ban players from Russia and Belarus over the invasion of Ukraine.

That war continues, but the club is allowing Russians and Belarusians to compete this time.

Djokovic has won Wimbledon each of the past four times it was held — in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022; the tournament was canceled in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic — and seven times in all.

“I mean, Novak is the main favorite to win Wimbledon. That’s obvious,” Alcaraz said. “But I will try to play at this level, to have chances to beat him or make the final at Wimbledon.”

If they are indeed seeded Nos. 1 and 2, Alcaraz and Djokovic could meet only in the championship match on July 16. At Roland Garros, Alcaraz was the No. 1 seed at a Grand Slam tournament for the first time; Djokovic was No. 3, and they were drawn to meet in the semifinals. The first two sets were terrific, but then Alcaraz faded because of full-body cramps he attributed, at least in part, to tension, and Djokovic took the last two sets 6-1, 6-1 on the way to the trophy.

There was no other major change in the men’s rankings Monday, with Daniil Medvedev still at No. 3, followed by Casper Ruud at No. 4 and Stefanos Tsitsipas at No. 5. Taylor Fritz, who is from California, and Frances Tiafoe, who is from Maryland, were at Nos. 9-10, remaining the first pair of American men in the top 10 in more than a decade.

Sara Sorribes Tormo Advances to Fourth Round of French Open Via Walkover

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Tom Castaneda

Sara Sorribes Tormo has advanced to the Round of 16 at the French Open… without breaking a sweat.

World No.4 Elena Rybakina withdrew from Roland Garros with an upper respiratory illness on Saturday just before she was scheduled to take the court for her third-round match against the 26-year-old tennis player.

Rybakina told reporters she began feeling ill after her second-round match. She hoped to be able to play but struggled to sustain 10-minutes of work on the court.

“I saw the doctor and they said that actually it’s all a virus here in Paris,” Rybakina said. “I guess with my allergy, immune system just went down and I picked up something. As I said, I was not sleeping well for two days. I had fever, headache. I think you can hear [my voice] also.

“So, yeah, it’s difficult to perform and obviously to run and even breathe. So I think that was the only right decision I could make.”

With Rybakina’s withdrawal, Sorribes Tormo advances via walkover and is into her first Fourth Round at a Grand Slam.

She’ll next face 14th-seed Beatriz Haddad Maia.

Sorribes Tormo’s previous best showing was a third round appearance at the 2021 US Open.

Hispanically Yours

Celebrating the Latino Influence

Tag Archives: Elena Rybakina