NEW YORK, Sept 2 \u2014 Elena Rybakina said it was so far, so good with her left heel injury after she eased into the second round of the US Open with a straight sets victory over US teen Thea Frodin.<\/p>\n
The second-ranked Kazakh has her sights not only on a third Grand Slam but also the world number one ranking \u2014 which she could claim just by reaching the semi-finals at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n
Her 6-3, 6-2 victory over the powerful but erratic Frodin was a polished performance, and an encouraging one after the injury that flared up to force her out of her Cincinnati Open quarter-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy with the match. Especially when you don\u2019t know your opponent, it always can be dangerous, but overall I\u2019m happy with the first match and how it went,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great result after 10 days from that kind of injury.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybakina had been reassured in Cincinnati when the physio told her she hadn\u2019t torn her Achilles tendon.<\/p>\n
But she was unable to walk without pain for several days and is still cautiously managing her training, rest and treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to serve, I realized I cannot push from the leg. So it was impossible to continue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom that, we started my recovery. We didn\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to be able to play here or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were taking day by day. I was not playing for the full week, so seven days no tennis and basically not too much gym I could do movement-wise.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, I feel Ok,\u201d she said after the match. \u201cOf course we\u2019ll see again day by day how I wake up tomorrow since it\u2019s the first match and kind of a lot of movement.\u201d \u2014 AFP\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 2 \u2014 Elena Rybakina said it was so far, so good with her left heel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[24495,2890,246,1965,366,3270,463],"class_list":["post-63235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-elena-rybakina","tag-achilles-tendon","tag-cincinnati-open","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-flushing-meadows","tag-grand-slam","tag-rybakina","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}