Once ridiculed as a Grand Slam underachiever, today, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka is officially a Grand Slam champion, defeating Elena Rybakina 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in an exciting 2023 Australian Open women’s final.
With her win, Aryna moves up to the World No. 2 spot, behind Polish player Iga Swiatek, and pockets a little over $2 million (USD).
In her post-match presser, Aryna said:
“It’s tough to explain what I’m feeling right now – I’m just super happy and proud. [This] is the best day of my life.”
“I think it’s even more enjoyable, I would say, after all those tough matches [in the past]. I really feel right now that I needed those tough losses to kind of understand myself a little bit better.
“It was like a preparation for me. I actually feel happy that I lost those matches, so I can be a different player and just a different Aryna, you know?”
In the final game, the Belarusian needed just four championship points to clinch the biggest win of her life, and reigning Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina made her work hard for every one of them.
An emotional Sabalenka fell to the court in disbelief as Elena’s last forehand sailed long, shedding tears of joy as the moment finally sunk in.
Aryna had already been improving her grand slam reputation by making it into three semi-finals since the 2022 Australian Open, where she developed an extreme case of the serving “yips,” which eventually forced her out of the tournament in the round of 16.
In order to put that nightmare behind her, the 24-year-old did some self-reflection. She figured out that to be successful, she needed to reel in the emotions that had gotten the better of her so many times in the past.
“I always had this weird feeling that when people would come to me and ask for [my] signature; I would be like, ‘Why are you asking for signature? I’m nobody. I’m a player. I don’t have a grand slam and all this stuff’,” Sabalenka said.
“I just changed how I feel [and] I started [to] respect myself more. I started to understand that actually I’m here because I work so hard and I’m actually good player.
“Just having this understanding that I’m a good player [has helped me] handle a lot of emotions, a lot of things on court. Every time I had a tough moment on court; I was just reminding myself that I’m good enough to handle all this.”
Saturday night’s match encapsulated that transformation perfectly as she fought back the early nerves and, again, a faulty serve.
The Belarusian swallowed her disappointment of losing the first set, then delivered two sets of sustained power-hitting under relentless pressure. If hitting big failed her on one point, she went even bigger again on the next.
The old Sabalenka would often let her emotions negatively dictate her performances. However, the new and improved Belarusian used her surplus power, aggression, and crazy angles to shake things up. Just as impressive was the way she maintained intensity without losing composure.
It was no surprise to me that Aryna battled back from being a set down to defeat Elena Rybakina, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.
You can see the entire interview here: