Magdaléna Rybáriková is one of the most enjoyable tennis-players to watch. Of course it helps that she is an absolute stunner, but she is also very entertaining in tennis-terms. In many ways, she is a throwback to a bygone era with her excellent volleys, one-handed sliced backhands and dropshots. Yet she has upgraded that model to the modern era with a big serve and groundstrokes of flairsome power (one-handed on the forehand, two-handed on the backhand), with which she likes to go for the lines. She hits plenty of brilliant winners!
Magda has a big serve, including a kick-serve that sometimes bounces right over her opponent for an ace! She also loves to serve and volley, especially on grass (her favourite surface), where the serve shoots through low, making it difficult for her opponent to hit an aggressive return.
Magda's volleys are perhaps the most striking aspect of her game. Her long limbs give her excellent reach, and her volleying-technique is both elegant and effective. She hits plenty of old-fashioned punch-volleys and delectable drop-volleys, as well as the modern drive-volleys.
In fact, Magda hits a lot of dropshots in general - both from the forecourt and from the baseline. She is very creative, often drawing opponents to the net deliberately so that she can pass or lob them. She has beautiful touch, though I sometimes feel that she hits too many dropshots.
Magda has a beautiful, flowing forehand that can be both a major weapon and an error-source. When I first saw her play (Wimbledon 2006 Girls' Singles final), she had a long backswing on her forehand, which didn't give her time to adjust to unexpected bounces. I suggested that she develop a much more compact backswing, and sure enough, when I next saw her play (in 2009), it was much more compact and less erratic. Magda can hit forehand winners in all directions: down the line, crosscourt (to the left) and off-forehands (to the right). She regularly clips the sideline with her crosscourt forehands!
Magda has both a two-handed backhand and a sliced backhand. The two-hander is an essential attribute of any member of my Eternal Fanship, and sometimes Magda reminds me of Daniela Hantuchová with her flairsome backhand winners down the line! And sometimes, when Magda is driven wide, she jumps for her two-handed backhand, with both feet off the ground when she hits it!
Magda's sliced backhand serves her well when she uses it to approach the net, as it keeps the ball low (especially on grass), making it difficult for her opponent to hit an effective passing-shot. I didn't like it when she sliced and stayed back as a junior - that is why she lost the Wimbledon 2006 Girls' Singles final in my opinion - but in 2009, I am happy to report that she uses her sliced backhand much better: as an approach.
Magda is very clever at constructing points and mixing up the pace. She'll hit some slow balls down the middle of the court, and then, without warning, go for one of her attacking-options: a booming groundstroke to one of the sidelines, a sliced backhand approach, or pin the opponent back with depth and then go for a dropshot. So her opponent never knows what to expect, and is tempted to go for a big shot into the corner too early in the rally, inducing her [the opponent] to make more errors than might be expected. But I want to emphasise that Magda does hit many brilliant winners, rather than being one of those boring, negative players who just try to mess up their opponents' rhythm and wait for errors.
Magda does tend to run around her backhand to hit a forehand too much for my liking (especially on clay, where she has more time to do so). Not only does this expose a huge gap to her right, it can also result in the ball jamming into her body when she does it on a ball wide to her backhand-sideline!
Good movement is not normally associated with tall players, but the 5'11" Magda displays impressive lateral retrieval. Again, her long limbs give her excellent reach, and she can chop back good defensive shots when stretched wide.
I'm also impressed by Magda's temperament. At Birmingham 2009, she came through a very tight first set against top seed Zheng,Jie, saving four set-points, and hitting several winners in a 12/10 tiebreak. In the final against Li,Na, she showed that she can play great tennis even when she's "very nervous", especially when she realises that her opponent is more nervous than she is.
Birmingham 2009 is certainly the highlight of Magda's career so far, as I write this the week after. It's the first WTA title - and indeed final - of her career (she had previously been a semi-finalist at Tashkent 2008, Hobart 2009 and Pattaya City 2009). Magda has also won four singles-titles on the ITF Women's Circuit in 2005 and 2008, and I still rate her runner's-up finish in the Wimbledon 2006 Girls' Singles as an outstanding achievement.
Notable scalps include world #13 Flavia Pennetta at Hobart 2009, #12 Caroline Wozniacki at Pattaya City 2009, and both #16 Zheng,Jie and #20 Li,Na at Birmingham 2009. Her highest ranking so far is her current (at the time of writing) #42, which will probably be considerably higher if you're reading this later in 2009!
Magda has the best on-court beauty of anyone right now. She has a gorgeous face, with those deep-set Slovak eyes, a range of wonderful facial expressions including a lovely smile, that cute freckle above the left edge of her mouth, and she usually wears her long hair in a nice ponytail. She also has a fantastic figure, with long, shapely legs. And she's even more beautiful than photos can show, because of her graceful gestures - she makes every little thing she does seem extraordinary, even if it's something as mundane as retrieving balls from under her skirt! ;-)
By the end of 2009, this biography will include a detailed review of each year of Magda's career.