Elena Rybakina vs Marta Kostyuk Prediction

Fourth seed Elena Rybakina will face Ukraine's Marta Kostyuk in the first round of the 2023 US Open. The match will be played on August 28, 2023.

Elena Rybakina will return to action for the first time since retiring in the Round of 16 at the Western & Southern Open due to a shoulder injury. Rybakina has been perturbed by scheduling issues in the preceding tournament in Montreal where she played a late-night match that finished at 3 a.m. local time in the quarterfinal, leaving her bereft of energy in her next match. The Kazakh also confirmed that she picked up some niggling injuries during the week in Canada, but chose to play in Cincinnati. It's fair to say that decision certainly backfired and it only worsened her US Open preparations. Nonetheless, Rybakina's recent update on her social media account should clear any doubt about her fitness issues ahead of her clash against Marta Kostyuk.

Marta Kostyuk will hope that lightning can strike twice when she takes on another top-10 seed for a fourth Grand Slam in a row. The Ukrainian star is one of the most dangerous unseeded floaters in the draw and this couldn't have been a tougher examination for Elena Rybakina who has already lost out to Kostyuk on hard courts this season. Kostyuk was 0-14 against Top-10 players before Wimbledon but upset Greece's Maria Sakkari for that elusive first win against that caliber of opponents. She has since doubled that tally with a straight sets win over an out-of-form Caroline Garcia in Washington. But she enters this year's US Open on the back of three straight defeats.

Elena Rybakina cannot afford a slow start here as Marta Kostyuk will be tough to beat from a winning position. The odds are certainly stacked against the unseeded Ukrainian partly because of her dismal record against Top 10 players throughout her career, but it looks like she has eradicated that stat, having won her last two. Rybakina also enters this match as a bit of an unknown quantity after her retirement in Cincinnati. We are not entirely sure if her shoulder will be operating at 100%. Add to the fact that the US Open is the one major she has never gone beyond the third round stage in her career (lost her opening match last year to Clara Burel), and this one could get really interesting for the Kazakh. In that regard, we're backing the Kostyuk sets spread almost at evens.