Aryna Sabalenka beat Zeng Qinwei in decisive straight sets at the Australian Open, capping a fortnight’s run that has made her one of the top contenders in her sport at the moment, even if it’s not the ratings.
For the seventh time in as many matches, the 25-year-old Belarusian powerhouse Sabalenka dominated her opponent for much of the match, stunning Zeng with her blistering serves, punishing forehands and forehands that sent them off the court or at the net almost impossible for her competition to handle.
Sabalenka closed out the first game with a 6-3 6-2 victory, before clinching the match point after 76 minutes in the fifth game.
Sabalenka was nervous before the match, but those feelings disappeared when she stepped into Rod Laver Arena, a stark contrast to her past two Grand Slam finals.
“I felt like I was in control as soon as I walked out on the court,” she said, sipping a glass of champagne.
Sabalenka became the second consecutive title holder by a woman to win a hard-court Grand Slam title since 2014. In a sport that has rarely been consistent at the top level, Sabalenka has been a beacon of light. Stability in the most important competitions.
In the year Starting with the US Open in 2022, she has made at least the semifinals of every Grand Slam. Since the beginning of last year, she has played in three Grand Slam finals, winning two and falling one point short of a fourth.
Her consistency is remarkable because it wasn’t long before Sabalenka looked as lost as a top tennis player can be. For months in the early parts of 2022, she had a painful case of the yips, a nickname for psychological blocks that prevent athletes from performing basic tasks.
In Sabalenka’s case, she had 21 double faults per match, 18 serving losses per match. In the year She “just” celebrated by hitting 10 when she won the 2022 Australian Open. No one can predict the run that will begin in less than a year or how it will turn out.
If you would like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, please click here.
Sabalenka, a player everyone knows has the talent and athleticism to be the best player in the world, basically says she doesn’t want to talk to her coaches about her services. She fired her sports psychologist, deciding it would be hers alone. She really did.
She began to speak publicly about the emotions that surrounded her. Sabalenka’s father and first tennis coach Time was running out, and in a way, her grief was coming out on the tennis court.
Sabalenka said she decided to start talking about her grief and pain in order to help other people who lost their parents at a young age. It didn’t happen. But the release of all those raw emotions seems to set her free and allow her to swing more freely than ever before.
She was the No. 1 player in the world after the US Open last year. Poland’s Iga Swiatek returned at the end of the season. But Swiatek struggled through her first three matches in her first Grand Slam of the year, despite facing a tough set of opponents, failing to make the second week, while Sabalenka cruised regardless of who was standing at the net.
She avenged her loss to Coco Gauff in the US Open final in the semi-finals. Next up is 21-year-old China’s Zeng, who in the past six months has begun to fulfill what many have predicted for her in recent years – replacing Li Nan as China’s next tennis prospect. Champion. The Chinese fans were cheering for her and waving the Chinese flag from the first ball as they did their best to lift Zheng up.
“I started very slow and didn’t play my tennis game,” Zeng said. “She (Sabalenka) is a very aggressive player. She takes the other player’s comfort away.”
Perhaps Zeng will one day be able to do this for great players as well. But in addition to facing a superior version of Sabalenka, Zeng struggled to control the nerves of her first Grand Slam final at the end of the tournament when Sabalenka, the 12th seed, was the only player she faced in the 50th seed.
Sabalenka was a completely different level of enemy, and she was.
In the year Since 2013, she has become the first woman to win Australian Open titles with women. Sabalenka, like Victoria Azarenka, is Belarusian. It is a country whose players have had to travel through difficult tennis terrain since Russia – with the support of Belarus – invaded Ukraine in 2022. With the exception of the tournaments held in Great Britain, Russian and Belarusian players were allowed to continue the tournament. Under their flag or in team competition and symbols of their country are prohibited by the sport.
Sabalenka, who lives primarily in Miami, has been repeatedly pressured to leave the war, something that could be dangerous for anyone with family still living in Russia or Belarus. She finally broke her silence on the issue at last year’s French Open in Paris, following a repeated confrontation with a journalist from Ukraine, and then skipping two post-match news conferences.
“I don’t support war, that is, I don’t support Alexander Lukashenko now,” she said, referring to the Belarusian president.
Sabalenka had previously supported Lukashenko, appearing in a well-known video with him on New Year’s Eve before the coup, but Lukashenko rigged an election to take power long after he crushed the opposition movement.
It was the start of a tumultuous summer for Sabalenka. She lost on match point in the semifinals of the French Open, then went one-set up in the semifinals of Wimbledon, then again in the final of the US Open.
Sabalenka said on Saturday that the loss to Gauff has pushed her to try to improve her game.
Her coach, Anton Dubrov, said that they tried to have an extra weapon in the fall and season, so that she had a fallback plan in case her aggressive hitting style went wrong.
“We were trying to find a way to play style,” Dubrov said on Saturday. “We will try to work more on the volley and we will try to drive the volley to go more to the net. Just push yourself to play in front because if you can’t play on the baseline, if you can’t hit the winners from the baseline, you can find other ways as usual.
With the help of the wise coach Jason Stacey, they also tried to keep the atmosphere of the team light and playful.
The past two weeks Sabalenka has taken both approaches to new levels. In several matches and again on Saturday, she moved to the front of the court and finished her points, although she played well from the start and took time with Zeng and Gauff and everyone else.
In the warm-up and training rooms on the lower level of Melbourne Park, she sparred with Stacey and Dubrov with medicine balls and showed off her flexibility by lifting a cup off Stacey’s head as she stood upright with a roundhouse jiujitsu kick.
On game days, she signed the bald head with a black marker and wrote Stacey’s name on his ear even though it was gone. The more distortion around, the better.
“It’s very important,” Stacey said. From an emotional point of view, from a neuroscientific, more neuroscience-based, how our brain works and just those moments, I mean, people learn better and pay more attention and become a little bit more fresh. , they can have a little fun. You have a little creativity.
Sabalenka said all the playing time helped her focus on the court.
“Keep it simple, keep it fun,” she said.
For now, no one will accuse Sabalenka of playing all that creative style of tennis or not having time for her brain to tire. But lately, tennis for her is little more than hitting the ball hard, and if that doesn’t work, hitting harder, and if that doesn’t work, hitting it hard while still floating in the air close to the net. . Sabalenka rarely sees a ball she doesn’t want to hit.
After two weeks on the field that ended with a big silver trophy, she has no reason to think she should do anything else. She is having a lot of fun.
(David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)