Sabalenka

Aryna Sabalenka's undefeated run in 2023 has carried her to the Australian Open title with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Elena Rybakina.

In the next game, though, Sabalenka gave that right back, double-faulting twice, including on break point, to give Rybakina a 5-4 edge. Which makes perfect sense: This was the most important match of her career to date. A few games later, Sabalenka returned the favor, also putting her racket on one of Rybakina's offerings at that same speed. Sabalenka had been broken just six times in 55 service games through the course of these two weeks, an average of once per match. 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. It was telling that Sabalenka's remarks during the postmatch ceremony were directed at her coach, Anton Dubrov, and her fitness trainer, Jason Stacy.

Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeated Elena Rybakina in three sets to win a thrilling women's Australian Open final Saturday, becoming the first player ...

In the second set she targeted the Rybakina forehand and broke early for a 3-1 lead. After an impressive second set from Sabalenka, the match entered a tense third set decider. It’s kind of relief, I’ve been in the top 10 but I didn’t have a grand slam trophy yet and it’s been really tough to get it, every slam was super emotional. Serving first, she opened the match with a double fault as nerves clearly played a part on an occasion such as this. But Sabalenka found accuracy as well as power in the second and third sets, with Rybakina faltering at crucial stages. Minsk-born Sabalenka was competing in her first grand slam final, having previously lost three major semifinals.

With geopolitics swirling around tennis Sabalenka muscled her way to a break for 4-3 in the final set, earning the break with a powerful overhead smash from ...

She banged out 17 aces against 7 double faults while winning 72% of the points on her first serve. She congratulated Sabalenka on joining the Grand Slam club. She added that playing under a neutral flag in Melbourne makes her feels as if she comes “from nowhere.” 1 Iga Swiatek, who won the French and U.S. Because Belarus backs the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Australian Open said that Russian and Belarusian players could not compete under the flag or name of their countries, and instead have white flags next to their names. “It was enjoyable to play in front of you, thank you so much.”

Aryna Sabalenka beat Elena Rybakina 4-6 6-3 6-4 to win the Australian Open title on Saturday.

MELBOURNE, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Aryna Sabalenka beat Elena Rybakina 4-6 6-3 6-4 to win the Australian Open title on Saturday. Register for free to Reuters and know the full story Sabalenka beats Rybakina to win Australian Open

The 24-year-old Belarusian player pushed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan to three sets to capture her first Grand Slam singles title.

Two games from the championship and in the driver’s seat, Sabalenka pumped her fist, took a few deep breaths and mouthfuls of water on the changeover, then strutted back onto the court to hammer her way to the title. As the reigning Wimbledon champion playing against a first-time Grand Slam finalist, Rybakina held a priceless edge in experience, but Sabalenka had all of the momentum, and the balls were jumping off her strings with a pop and a zip that Rybakina couldn’t match. She was also asked to answer for her native country’s invasion of Ukraine as she stampeded to the title. On her third chance to get the crucial break of serve, Sabalenka sent her opponent scrambling after shots, then put away the game with an overhead shot from the middle of the court. Then, on Sabalenka’s fourth match point, Rybakina buckled, sending that forehand long, and an overwhelmed Sabalenka flat onto her back. On Thursday, after finally making her first Grand Slam final on her fourth try, Sabalenka talked about having fired her sports psychologist. Rybakina, a Russian through her childhood who became a citizen of Kazakhstan when the country promised to pay for her tennis training, spent the better part of two weeks during Wimbledon talking about whether she was actually Kazakh or Russian. They were first and second in hitting winners off their opponents’ serve, and at the top of the charts in peak serve speed, with both cracking 120 miles per hour. It was Sabalenka’s first Grand Slam title in a rocky career that has included the kind of error-ridden, big-moment meltdowns from which some players almost never recover. The year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. On the final, anxious point, Rybakina sent a forehand long. “We’ve been through a lot of downs,” she said.

Aryna Sabalenka, 24, wins her first Grand Slam title, beating Elena Rybakina in three sets in the Australian Open women's final on Saturday.

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. The key statistic, ultimately, was this: Sabalenka accumulated 13 break points, Rybakina seven. That, along with a commitment to trying to stay calm in the most high-pressure moments, is really paying off now. 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.

Aryna Sabalenka bludgeoned her way to a maiden Grand Slam title at the Australian Open with a 4-6 6-3 6-4 win over Kazakh 22nd seed Elena Rybakina on ...

"It was a really tough year and I had tough moments last year. "I had goosebumps when everyone was cheering for us... She then double-faulted on one matchpoint and squandered two more to draw gasps from the crowd. She was going to fight for it... Right now, I'm just super proud of myself," Sabalenka added. "Thanks so much for an amazing atmosphere," said Sabalenka, who received the trophy from former world number one Billie Jean King.

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 Belarusian, who beat Elena Rybakina to win her first Grand Slam title on Saturday, held the trophy in triumph while the war in Ukraine remained a brutal ...

However you present her on the scoreboard, it was a Belarus victory. “Missing the Wimbledon was really tough for me,” she said. Her performance on Saturday was incontrovertible proof that they had succeeded, with the help of a biomechanical expert but also Sabalenka’s own resilience. Born and raised in Russia, she switched allegiance to Kazakhstan in exchange for financial support in 2018. Rybakina overpowered Swiatek in the fourth round in Melbourne on her way to the final. “And all that really starts from the people I was surrounded with. 2, behind Iga Swiatek, who still has a large lead based on her terrific 2022 season but who has lost to Sabalenka and Rybakina in the last two significant tournaments. It was tennis reminiscent of the big-serving, high-velocity duels between Serena and Venus Williams. But for the most part, it was strength versus strength; straight-line power against straight-line power. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said after the mixed doubles final. Swiatek, the Polish star who looked set to become a dominant No. Anything less would not have sufficed against Elena Rybakina in their gripping, corner-to-corner final that might have been better suited to a ring as the two six-footers exchanged big blows for two hours and 28 minutes.

Aryna Sabalenka won her first Grand Slam title by coming back to beat Elena Rybakina in the Australian Open women's final.

“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.

Aryna Sabalenka's Australian Open championship is about persistence. It's about the value of confronting, not ignoring, problems.

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 made the semifinals before losing to No. She is not as stressed out about her serve. 2 in the rankings Monday, behind only Swiatek. 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. I’m a player.

In a blazing final, Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina matched each other ace for ace and winner for winner, until the No. 5 seed found another gear, ...

“I just changed how I feel. When this tournament began, one player, Iga Swiatek, was in a stratosphere of her own. The quality of the match was reflected in the statistics. The nerves returned, of course—she double faulted on her first match point, and made ground-stroke errors on two others. “I was just nervous in the first set,” Sabalenka said. “I was rushing a lot. Sabalenka was playing her first Grand Slam final, but she already knew exactly how hard it is to win one of these tournaments. “Nobody tells you it’s going to be easy,” Aryna Sabalenka kept saying to herself on Saturday night in Rod Laver Arena. 5 seed found another gear, and her first Grand Slam title. 1 in Australia, and No. Sabalenka is a compelling battle for No. Australian Open

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 is not as reliant on others to help her self-esteem, no longer employing a sports psychologist. She made the semifinals before losing to No. 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. That set the tone for a season in which she led the tour with 400 double-faults, sometimes more than 20 in a match.

Aryna Sabalenka said the tough moments she's experienced in her career made winning her first Grand Slam title even more enjoyable.

Every time I had a tough moment on court, I was just reminding myself that I’m good enough to handle all this just everything.” Sabalenka will rise to No 2 in the world on Monday, equalling her career high. I started to understand that actually I’m here because I work so hard and I’m actually good player. “The last game, yeah, of course I was a little bit nervous. That was a tough game. “I really feel right now that I really needed those tough losses to kind of understand myself a little bit better. I was keep telling myself like, nobody tells you that it’s going to be easy, you just have to work for it, work for it till the last point. It was never going to be easy. I fought so hard to win this one. I really enjoyed this battle. But something changed inside her and over the past fortnight, she played almost flawless tennis to take the title. It was like a preparation for me.”

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 ...

“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. 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. “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. “She was strong mentally, physically.” She yelled and turned her back to the court. [Elena Rybakina](https://apnews.com/article/wimbledon-sports-moscow-kazakhstan-venus-williams-eeec79c03f00550d3476baa22e2e273e) presented itself — and this time, Sabalenka saw a forehand from her similarly powerful foe sail long. She hung in there until a fourth chance to close out She wiggled her shoulders and exhaled.

New Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka didn't get much sleep Saturday night after a rambunctious come-from-behind victory, but you wouldn't have known ...

Sabalenka, 24, was playing in her first Grand Slam singles final after breaking through following three semifinal appearances in the past two years.

“You just have to work for it and work for it to the end.” In 2022 Grand Slam matches in which Sabalenka lost the first set, she had gone 6-0: three wins at the Australian (where she reached the fourth round), one at the French (where she reached the third round) and two at the U.S. On a third championship point, 2 hours 26 minutes into the match, she shoved a backhand just long, but while she made the occasional gesture acknowledging her struggle — a slight smile, even — she won the battle with herself. She held at love at 5-4 for the first set — the first set Sabalenka had yielded among 21 this year — then tacked on more peril for Sabalenka by forging ahead 15-40 while returning serve in the first game of the second set. “She played unbelievable tennis,” the winner, Sabalenka, said of the other winner in the champion’s news conference in Melbourne, “and I fought so hard to win this one, and I think the tennis was great. Her service side stayed almost airtight with 17 aces and only one more break point faced until the harrowing final game. The match filled with the deuces of long, tight games — a 57-minute second set, a 57-minute third — its soundtrack the shrieks and grunts of Sabalenka against Rybakina’s noiseless power. “I think it’s more enjoyable, I would say, after all those tough matches,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll have more matches in the finals of Grand Slams,” Sabalenka told Rybakina on the court during the trophy ceremony. It began after a weird dearth of split-set matches at this tournament, with straight sets enough to decide six of eight fourth-round matches, all four quarterfinals and both semifinals. All 82 winners under pressure that seared back and forth across the Australian Open women’s final Saturday eventually seemed to identify just two winners: the players. It looked very much the player who will become No.

The 24-year-old claimed her first Grand Slam championship Saturday in Melbourne.

Naturally, the 24-year-old had nothing to do but celebrate after the victory in Melbourne, and she did so with a spectacular TikTok after the match. 2 ranking after her Australian Open title. Sabalenka, a Belarus native, got all she could handle from Rybakina–the defending Wimbledon champion–but managed to scrape out a 4–6, 6-3, 6-4 victory.

The women's champion donned a lilac look by an Australian luxury fashion label, as she took her new trophy on a gondola ride at the botanical gardens in ...

“I like to pose, especially when you’re a Grand Slam champion,” she laughed. She matched the capped-sleeve blouse and skirt featuring delicate floral appliques with a pair of royal blue [Manolo Blahnik Hangisi](https://www.manoloblahnik.com/us/hangisi-16027.html) pumps. Social

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.

This week's "Hot Shots" is a collection of some of the best congratulatory messages sent the way of 2023 Australian Open singles champions Novak Djokovic ...