Just when you thought the race to the WTA Finals couldn’t get any stranger, Elena Rybakina decides to have a full-blown identity crisis in the middle of a final, lose a set, remember she’s a Wimbledon champion, and then steamroll her opponent to snatch the Ningbo Open title. No, really, that’s what happened.

Rybakina, the stoic Kazakh with a serve that could punch a hole through a brick wall, came into the Ningbo final against Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova looking like she’d rather be anywhere else. Maybe getting a root canal. Or listening to a timeshare presentation. She was flat, spraying errors all over the court, and generally playing like a top-100 player, not a top-10 titan. Alexandrova, who seems to have Rybakina’s number on hardcourts, happily took advantage of this walkabout, po

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