"It doesn't matter so much on which court you start the tournament, but on which court you finish it." Yelena Rybakina could not have said it much more precisely a few days ago in the "New York Times".

Rybakina, 23 years old, secured the most important title of the year with the Wimbledon triumph last year.

At the beginning of the Grand Slam tournament in Melbourne there was no interest in Rybakina.

The organizers of the Australian Tennis Association around tournament director Craig Tiley started round one on outdoor court 13, which at least a few journalists on social media called disrespectful.

Rybakina declared that she did not care.

Rybakina between sports policy fronts

The fact that the right-hander with the currently best serve on the women's tour has not received much attention is not only due to her reserved, sometimes stoic nature. Rybakina has been competing for Kazakhstan for several years;

but in this politically and sportingly sensitive world, the timing for the Russian-born Moscow and her successes could hardly be worse.

The famous semi-finals at the Australian Open will only change that in the short term - if at all.

Rybakina switched from the Russian to the Kazakh association five years ago, hoping for better support there in terms of content, but above all financially.

In the Russian Tennis Federation she was just one of many talents in 2018.

Yaroslava Shvedova, who once also switched from the Russian to the Kazakh association and now works as a player developer in Kazakhstan, and the financially well-heeled Kazakh tennis president Bulat Utemuratov took advantage of this and have accompanied Rybakina to this day.

In terms of sport, however, Rybakina did not benefit from her first Grand Slam title and also got caught between sport-political fronts.

As a result of the war of aggression against Ukraine, the powerful organizers of the Wimbledon tournament had excluded Belarusian and Russian players, coaches and journalists from the tournament, also under pressure from the then British government around Boris Johnson.

The men's (ATP) and women's (WTA) player organizers reacted draconically and refrained from awarding world ranking points.

With 2,000 points more, Rybakina would comfortably be in the top ten in the world rankings, instead there is a 22 behind her seeding.

“It's not that easy to avoid mistakes with the hard shots I have.

I'm still trying to find my consistency throughout the year," she said in Melbourne.

She succeeds.

Among other things, Rybakina defeated last year's finalist Danielle Collins and gave the best return player in the world, Iga Swiatek, little chance.

On Tuesday she won against Jelena Ostapenko.

Rybakina is a polite and smart young woman.

When asked by the FAZ how much support there was from her country of birth, she simply did not respond to the Russian component: "I get a lot of support all over the world, but most certainly from Kazakhstan." For the first time, she felt really valued themselves during the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games.

When the press conference threatened to get more political, Rybakina soon cut it short and explained: “I answered all the questions at Wimbledon and have nothing more to add.” In London, she was asked whether her success at home was being used for propaganda purposes: “I have played for Kazakhstan for a long time, did so at the Olympics, which has always been a dream of mine.

I don't know what will happen.

It's always news for sure, but I can't do anything about it.

I can't do anything about my place of birth either."

Khamil Tarpishev, the longtime Russian tennis president and Putin ally, credited Rybakina's Wimbledon title as a Russian victory at the time.

Rybakina herself declared in 2022 that she had not been to Moscow, where her parents still live, since the beginning of the war.

In Melbourne, exactly one Russian colleague is interviewing Russian-speaking players for an online site.

He said interest in Rybakina from Russia remained the same.

Belarusian Wiktoryja Asaranka won a place in the semi-finals ten years after her second title at the Australian Open.

She now meets Rybakina.