After a week with several rain delays concluded for Elena Rybakina with a semifinal loss on Sunday, the No. 3 seed at the National Bank Open blasted the WTA Tour for how things transpired in Montreal.
The native of Kazakhstan offered the criticism after she was asked about her quarterfinal win over Daria Kasatkina finishing at about 2:55 a.m. ET on Saturday morning.
"It's the first time when the match went I think that long, and we finished also so late," Rybakina said after her three-set loss to Liudmila Samsonova in a semifinal on Sunday afternoon.
"It's the first time and hopefully the last time because I think it's been a little bit unprofessional from the -- I cannot say really the tournament because I think that the most important is the WTA here.
"Leadership a little bit weak for now, but hopefully something is going to change because this year it was many situations which I cannot really understand."
The tournament chose to play the second semifinal on Sunday afternoon instead of Saturday night, partly because of an uncertain forecast.
Jessica Pegula won her semifinal at the scheduled time on Saturday afternoon before the weather got worse. The final, originally scheduled for Sunday at 1:30 p.m., was pushed back to appoxiimately 5:30 p.m.
"The most difficult was (Saturday evening)," tournament director Valerie Tetreault told reporters. "There were many things to take into account. Of course, the last day TV is very important, and the fans were waiting. The players were there. We knew one player had to play two matches on the finals day, which is quite complicated."
Tetreault said Rybakina preferred having the semifinal pushed back to Sunday after her marathon match on Friday night/Saturday morning.
Play got way backed up on Friday because rain Thursday prevented two round-of-16 matches from starting, resulting in the early-morning finish for Rybakina against Kasatkina.
Rybakina also didn't finish her Thursday match against Sloane Stephens until about 11 p.m. ET.
"We could avoid the situation easily, but I don't know why we didn't," Rybakina said. "Yeah, it wasn't easy to think about today's match. If you win, you have to play another one, so I'm not really disappointed so much about the loss because it was kind of expected.
"I'm more disappointed, again, about just the whole situation. As I said, it's not the first time with the players affected a lot."
However Rybakina did not offer a specific solution to the scheduling issues in her press conference.
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