Rybakina, Swiatek roar ahead as Gauff falls by the wayside

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February 11, 2026
tennis
11-February-2026

Rybakina, Swiatek roar ahead as Gauff falls by the wayside

Doha: Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina made a roaring start to her Qatar TotalEnergies Open 2026 campaign at the Khalifa International Tennis & Squash Complex on Tuesday as top-seeded Iga Swiatek also rolled ahead but Coco Gauff fell to Italian lucky loser Elisabetta Cocciaretto in the second round.

Kazakh Rybakina, who is seed number two, showed flashes of dominance. After trailing 4-2 in the second set, the World No. 3 won the final four games to close out a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Wang Xinyu in 1 hour and 20 minutes.

The result also marked a significant milestone for Rybakina: her 400th career match-win. Rybakina will next face another Chinese player in Zheng Qinwen.

Polish Swiatek scored a comfortable straight-sets win over Indonesian wild card Janice Tjen

to reach the third round.

Playing her first match since a quarter-final loss to eventual champion Rybakina at the Australian Open, Swiatek dominated the opening set, dropping just eight points in a 6-0 win.

The second set was more competitive as Tjen displayed the form that has seen her rise from outside the top 400 at the start of the 2025 season to her current ranking of No. 46. After the players traded early breaks, Swiatek broke in the eighth game and held to close out a 6-0, 6-3 victory in 1 hour, 9 minutes.

“It’s always nice to start a tournament in a solid way and I’m ready for every match,” Swiatek said when asked about this streak by the media in Doha.

“I think that’s the reason for that. I don’t take anything for granted, so even first rounds or second rounds, I treat them as super important matches and as a challenge. So I’m ready for it from the beginning.”

The six-time Grand Slam winner will play Daria Kasatkina for a place in the quarter-finals.

She has won her last six meetings with the Russian-born Australian without dropping a set.

Fourth seed Gauff was however out of sorts as she was beaten 6-4, 6-2 by Cocciaretto.

American Gauff, who received a first-round bye, was also knocked out of the tournament in her opening match last year.

Cocciaretto will face Ann Li in the next round after only the third victory of her career against a top-10 ranked opponent.

The world number 57 said she was inspired by her friend and skier Sofia Goggia, who took bronze in the women’s downhill event at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics at the weekend.

“We always send messages and FaceTime to talk about our sports and how you manage some things,” she said of Goggia. “She gives me a lot of advice...

“I love how they (skiers) approach the sport. They have fear of nothing. They’re focused a lot and they put themselves after everything.”

Also falling by the wayside were sixth seed Jasmine Paolini and eighth-seeded Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova.

Former world number three Maria Sakkari saw off Paolini, also 6-4, 6-2, to set up a last-16 tie with Varvara Gracheva, who overcame Czech Linda Noskova 6-2, 2-6, 7-5.

Former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko beat Alexandrova 6-4, 6-2.

Australian Open semi-finalist Elina Svitolina and rising Canadian star Victoria Mboko also reached the last 16.

In the late evening centre court match, Anna Kalinskaya prevailed over 12th seeded American Emma Navarro 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 to log her first second-round win in Doha and her first top-20 win of the season.

“I am very happy to have won,” said the 27-year-old Kalinskaya. “It is the first time in four to five years here. It was very challenging but I managed to be be aggressive in the final set.”

Kalinskaya meets Svitolina in the next round.