Sabalenka

Aryna Sabalenka, the fifth seed from Belarus, roared back powerfully to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 and take her first grand slam singles title.

On Saturday, she relied heavily on her serve to hold on in the tight final games. On Monday, she will rise to No 10 in the rankings from her current position of 25th, breaking the top 10 for the first time in her career at last. On her fourth match point, Sabalenka forced a final forehand error from Rybakina, and collapsed to the ground as a grand slam champion at last. Her victory is a validation of the perseverance and toil it has taken to improve both her mentality and game. She hired a psychologist, who helped her manage her emotions, before recently deciding to hold herself accountable. With her considerably heavier ball – her ability to combine pace and spin, unlike Rybakina’s flatter ball – alongside her greater athleticism, Sabalenka knew that she had the edge over Rybakina in any neutral rally. Sabalenka remains unbeaten in 2023, winning her first 11 matches of the season with two titles to her name. She spent her time in Adelaide throwing in underarm serves because she simply could not serve. Throughout the supreme winning run she has compiled to start this season, Aryna Sabalenka continually stressed that her mentality has shifted. Neither player shied away from the pressure of such a significant moment and they produced exquisite shotmaking from the beginning. Sabalenka, who hails from Belarus, is the first neutral athlete to win a singles grand slam tournament since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She is more composed now, willing to work for her opportunities instead of swinging thoughtlessly for the fences.

Aryna Sabalenka lies on the court during the women's final round match at the 2023 Australian. After winning the final match, against Elena Rybakina, with fifty ...

Her march to the Australian Open final had been important—a confirmation that Rybakina was one of the best players in the world, that her Wimbledon win was not a fluke. Sabalenka hit a thunderous overhead from a tricky position, the middle of the court, to take the break. She won the match on her third championship point, finishing with fifty-one winners to twenty-eight unforced errors, an astonishing ratio. She had to learn, she said, to fix her own problems on the court. She finished the year with more than four hundred double faults, more than a hundred more than the player with the second most. Rybakina came into the match as the twenty-second seed (and with the early outer-court assignments to match it). Her backhand seems chiselled to the essential motion and polished to smoothness, the way a sculpture can suggest the flow of water. And when the second set of the final began, and the pressure rose, she seemed to embrace it, and started to apply it herself. She had discovered, last year, that the problem was in her mind—but not only in the way one would imagine for a player with the yips. In the third game of the match, after firing an ace to go up 40–0, she watched her lead slip away, gifting a break point to Elena Rybakina with a double fault, and then losing the game with a loose forehand. She has a tiger’s face tattooed on her forearm, and a big cat’s rippling musculature. After Sabalenka scratched the break back to level the set at 4–4, Rybakina coolly got another, to go up 5–4, and then served out the set at love.

The big-hitting Belarusian overhauled Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in the final at Rod Laver Arena while barred from representing her country.

It's just about the hard work I've done." I live there right now," she said. "But I mean, I played the U.S. It's not about Wimbledon right now. Register for free to Reuters and know the full story [Russian and Belarusian flags](/lifestyle/sports/russian-flags-banned-australian-open-tennis-after-ukraine-complaint-2023-01-17/) to Melbourne Park on the second day of the tournament after a complaint from the Ukraine embassy in Australia.

Aryna Sabalenka won her first Grand Slam title by coming back to beat Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 at Melbourne Park on Saturday night.

“I really feel right now that I really needed those tough losses to kind of understand myself a little bit better. “I actually feel happy that I lost those matches, so right now I can be a different player and just a different Aryna, you know?” Capable of delivering aces, she also had a well-known problem with double-faulting, leading the tour in that category last year with nearly 400, including matches with more than 20. After much prodding from her group, she agreed to undergo an overhaul of her mechanics last August. At the end, when it mattered more than ever, Sabalenka was able to steady herself. “We’ve been through a lot of, I would say, downs last year,” said Sabalenka, who was appearing in her first major final and had been 0-3 in Slam semifinals until this week. I (kept) telling myself, like, ’Nobody tells you that it’s going to be easy.′ You just have to work for it, work for it, ’til the last point,” said Sabalenka, a 24-year-old from Belarus who is now 11-0 with two titles in 2023 and will rise to No. And so, as she wasted a second match point by flubbing a forehand, and a third by again missing another, Sabalenka did her best to stay calm, something she used to find quite difficult. “She was strong mentally, physically.” Clearly, this business of winning the Australian Open was not bound to happen without a bit of a struggle Saturday night. She hung in there until a fourth chance to close out Elena Rybakina presented itself — and this time, Sabalenka saw a forehand from her similarly powerful foe sail long. She yelled and turned her back to the court.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Aryna Sabalenka's Australian Open championship is about persistence. It's about the value of confronting, not ignoring, ...

The experience last year — of facing a lot of humility and fear, and instead of avoiding it or trying to go around it, she went right through it, hit it face-on,” Stacy said. “I think going through that process has helped her kind of realize, ‘Oh, the best way, really, actually, is what everyone always says: to face your fear and go through it.’ I think it’s given her this more internal belief that, ‘OK, even if this particular game or this moment in a match is tough, it’s like, OK, just keep going and it will all come back together.’” She will move up to No. She is not as reliant on others to help her self-esteem, no longer employing a sports psychologist. Sabalenka agreed to see a biomechanics expert who was part of the five-day project to change her serve about three weeks before the U.S. She is not as stressed out about her serve. She made the semifinals before losing to No. That set the tone for a season in which she led the tour with 400 double-faults, sometimes more than 20 in a match. He and Sabalenka's fitness coach, Jason Stacy, kept trying to get her to reconstruct her serve. I start respect myself more,” Sabalenka continued, between celebratory sips of bubbly. Aryna Sabalenka’s Australian Open championship is about persistence. I’m a player.

Avec ce titre, Sabalenka (24 ans) va retrouver lundi le deuxième rang mondial, le meilleur classement de sa carrière. Rybakina, 23 ans et championne de ...

Elle avait atteint son meilleur classement en janvier 2022 au 12e rang mondial. - À lire aussi: Rybakina, 23 ans et championne de Wimbledon l'an dernier sans points WTA distribués, va monter au 10e rang mondial, également son meilleur classement.

La joueuse de tennis Aryna Sabalenka croque un trophée. Aryna Sabalenka. Photo : Getty Images / Darrian Traynor.

Merci à mon équipe, la plus folle du circuit! Sabalenka avait déjà joué à trois occasions en demi-finales d'un tournoi du grand chelem, sans jamais parvenir à atteindre la finale. Sabalenka a joué un jeu très risqué qui a mis du temps à se mettre en place, mais qui a fini par payer sur sa quatrième balle de match dans un jeu où Rybakina a eu une occasion de reprendre son bris de retard.

Les points défilaient rapidement - d'ailleurs, sept des 13 premiers ont été des as. On a tout de suite vu que dans la finale à Melbourne entre Aryna Sabalenka ...

Invaincue en 11 matchs cette année, Sabalenka est une joueuse de puissance dont la grande force était aussi son déficit le plus sérieux : son service. Elles ont échangé des coups fulgurants en fond de terrain, souvent intouchables, résultant en coup gagnant après coup gagnant. Elle les a qualifiés de «l’équipe la plus folle du circuit, je dirais». «Nous avons traversé beaucoup de creux l’année dernière, a dit Sabalenka, qui participait à sa première grande finale. Le service le plus rapide de Rybakina a été de 195 km/h, celui de Sabalenka de 192 km/h. Nous avons travaillé si dur et vous méritez ce trophée.

Aryna Sabalenka wept tears of relief and joy after breaking through for her elusive maiden grand slam title with a tension-filled three-set Australian Open ...

“I lost three grand slam semi-finals and it was a really tough time. Alas, the emerging star fell a set short in her gallant quest to emulate Barty in claiming the Australian Open title the year after winning Wimbledon. But she refused to yield, quickly striking back with a break in the fourth game of the second set, a lead the fifth seed then refused to relinquish. “It was super emotional, I was super happy that I was able to handle all of the emotions in the last game.” But it was not straightforward as Rybakina saved three match points in an epic final game before Sabalenka saluted and slumped to the court in relief and perhaps also disbelief. Sabalenka has the distinction of being the last player to topple Barty in a final, beating Australia’s former world No.1 in Madrid in 2019 before the 26-year-old’s shock retirement – 12 more titles and three grand slam crowns later – last March.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Aryna Sabalenka won her first Grand Slam title by coming back to beat Elena Rybakina 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the Australian Open ...

A few games later, Sabalenka returned the favor, also putting her racket on one of Rybakina’s offerings at that same speed. This time, Sabalenka again turned toward her entourage, but with a sigh and an eye roll and arms extended, as if to say, “Can you believe it?” Sabalenka had been broken just six times in 55 service games through the course of these two weeks, an average of once per match. That, along with a commitment to trying to stay calm in the most high-pressure moments, is really paying off now. The key statistic, ultimately, was this: Sabalenka accumulated 13 break points, Rybakina seven. Long capable of hammering aces, she also had a well-known problem with double-faulting, leading the tour in that category last year with nearly 400, including more than 20 apiece in some matches.

The powerful Belarusian, who will become world No. 2 on Monday, showed a new side to her personality, posing effortlessly in front of the cameras.

'I think everyone still knows that I'm Belarusian player. That's it,' says newly crowned Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka.

“I think I will go back to Miami. I live there right now,” she said. It’s not about Wimbledon right now. The Belarus tennis federation was quick to extend congratulations to the country’s second tennis player to win a Grand Slam, following on from twice Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, who was knocked out in the semifinals. Sabalenka will not have “Belarus” next to her name on the winner’s trophy, the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup. Deemed a disruption by organizers, fans were banned from bringing Russian and Belarusian flags to Melbourne Park on the second day of the tournament after a complaint from the Ukraine embassy in Australia.

Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka took the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup on gondola tour through Melbourne's botanical gardens the morning after her ...

Just me and my trophy!" The newly-crowned major-winner, who'll return to No. Cloud 9 look an awful lot like Melbourne, Australia for Aryna Sabalenka on Sunday.