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By Giri Nathan
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]They say in boxing that “styles make fights.” I think this is generally true of tennis: The old rock/paper/scissors dynamic makes it hard to predict a fight between two players, because you have to wait and see how their styles might interact, and because those styles morph across seasons and surfaces. I wish it were true in a different sense: that every clash of different styles guaranteed entertainment. It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes it’s because one player’s just so good it’s made the other’s style illegible. Sometimes one player expresses her style too well and, whoops, deletes the opponent from the contest. That’s how Elena Rybakina, the 23-year-old representing Kazakhstan, treated former champ Simona Halep for stretches of their Wimbledon semifinal on Thursday, en route to a 6–3, 6–3 win.