MELBOURNE, Australia -- Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion, said Saturday she disagrees with the WTA Tour's decision to provisionally suspend her longtime coach, Stefano Vukov, and reiterated that she never made a complaint about him.
"I always said that he never mistreated me," Rybakina said at a news conference the day before the start of the Australian Open, where she was the runner-up to Aryna Sabalenka two years ago.
Rybakina, who is seeded No. 6 in Melbourne, characterized the whole thing as "definitely not the ideal situation" as she prepares to compete in the year's first Grand Slam tournament, and said she objected to comments made by "some coaches," mentioning Pam Shriver by name.
"I have never made any complaints or any of these things," Rybakina said Saturday. "I don't really want to speak about this any more. I want to focus on my matches here."
Rybakina announced right before last year's US Open that she no longer was working with Vukov, then said ahead of this season that her new coach would be Goran Ivanisevic. He won Wimbledon in 2001 as a player and then was Novak Djokovic's coach for 12 major titles.
But Rybakina said this month that Vukov would be rejoining her team. The WTA then said Vukov "is currently under a provisional suspension pending an independent investigation into a potential breach of the WTA code of conduct."
The WTA added that "Vukov is not eligible to obtain a WTA credential at this time," which would prevent him from going into player-only areas at tournaments such as practice courts or training areas.
Rybakina, the 2023 Australian Open runner-up, faces 16-year-old Australian Emerson Jones in the first round.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
