“If I worried what every bitch in New York was saying about me, I’d never leave the house.”
The words may belong to Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, but the sentiment is one Aryna Sabalenka has owned from the moment she touched down in New York. She has had little option.
The world No 1 arrived at Flushing Meadows, scene of the two most recent of her four grand slam title wins, still smarting from an unexpected loss to 35th-ranked Sára Bejlek at the Cincinnati Open and the online brickbats that followed. Branded a “showgirl” and accused of being more interested in self-promotion than sport, Sabalenka was accused of allowing social media updates and sponsor activities to interfere with the day job.
Rightly or wrongly, that perception has been fed by some patchy results over the past five months. On clay, there were defeats from seemingly unassailable positions against Hailey Baptiste in Madrid, Sorana Cirstea in Rome and, most damagingly, Diana Shnaider in Paris. On grass, there was a third-set beatdown from Jessica Pegula in Berlin, and a straight-sets loss to Naomi Osaka in the fourth round of Wimbledon.
The seasonal switch to hard courts has so far done nothing to arrest the malaise. Ekaterina Alexandrova squared her head-to-head with Sabalenka at five apiece in Toronto, while that 7-6 (9-7), 6-4 defeat to Bejlek at the Cincinnati Open, where the 28-year-old Belarusian held commanding leads in both sets, once again showed an alarming knack for reverse alchemy.
How Aryna Sabalenka has faced a barrage of criticism
So as she donned her revealing new mesh Nike outfit in preparation for the US Open mixed doubles alongside Novak Djokovic, Sabalenka must have been hoping for better. Instead, she got more of the same. A disappointing reversal against doubles specialists Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten was followed by further brickbats. Critics deemed her dress “trashy”, while a £295,000 jewellery set, the latest provided by Sabalenka’s sponsor Material Good, prompted accusations of tackiness and hypocrisy, given her vocal support for players to receive a larger slice of tournament revenues.
Factor in the growing threat to her ranking – failure to mount a successful title defence will see Sabalenka ousted as No 1, a fate that awaits anyway if Elena Rybakina makes the semi-finals – and she could be forgiven for coming over a bit Kim Cattrall. Or even a lot Kim Cattrall, as she did in an Instagram reel published a couple of days before the tournament began in earnest. Dressed to kill in a pink dress and heels, Sabalenka mouthed along with the famous Samantha Jones quote, which was played over upbeat music as she sashayed along a rooftop balcony with New York’s night skyline twinkling in the background.
The message could neither have been clearer nor more in keeping with Sabalenka’s innate pugnacity. She couldn’t care less about the noise surrounding her. And in case anyone missed the memo, Sabalenka has barely missed a chance to reformulate it in terms more palatable to the delicate sensibilities of the wider tennis world.
Aryna Sabalenka: ‘Maybe there is something wrong with people’
Asked in her pre-tournament media briefing if there was something wrong with her game, she replied: “Maybe there is something wrong with people.” A follow-up question about whether she felt as confident as she did last year was given similarly short shrift. “I’m always confident,” said Sabalenka.
If those remarks were offered with a detached air of semi-amusement, Sabalenka struggled to suppress outright laughter as she offered a more forthright assessment of the snarking after her emphatic 53-minute win over qualifier Polina Iatcenko in round two.
“I’m so tired of those miserable haters,” she said in a televised interview. “So I decided to really stay strong with myself and trust the process, trust myself, trust my choices.
“Whoever loves me, they’re going to be there for me no matter what. The haters, honestly, I don’t want to curse here right now, but they can go and… get on with their own lives.”
Even at her most relaxed, there is a simmering intensity about Sabalenka. For weeks, she has taken repeated inquiries about her form and off-court commitments in good part, but the line of questioning has clearly – and understandably – started to grate. Nobody likes to be told they aren’t living up to expectations in the workplace, especially when the truth cuts close to home – and no one will have been more conscious of her recent shortcomings than Sabalenka herself.
Sabalenka’s quietly bubbling frustration finally burst the banks this week when a reporter enquired, following her demolition of Iatcenko, how her mood was after a build-up week of “parties and fun and stuff like that”.
Sabalenka: ‘You guys are a joke’
“You guys are, like, a joke,” interjected Sabalenka, shaking her head in despair. “Parties? Fun? Like, why would you even say that? Why would you even think about that? “Like, what kind of question is that? Just because I posted some activities with brands, you think I’ve been partying and not training?”
Some context is required here. The question was almost identical to one Sabalenka fielded after her first-round victory over Camila Osorio, when she was asked how she balanced the energy required to attend sponsor events in the week leading up to the US Open with maintaining her level on court. Sabalenka was plainly frustrated by the question – “Why do you think the week before wasn’t focused on tennis?” she countered – but went on to offer a patient and reasoned response.
‘I really enjoy my time with brands’
“It’s like my hobby outside of tennis,” she said of her attendance at events hosted by the drinks companies Electrolit and Dobel Tequila, cosmetics brand Moroccanoil, and fashion house Gucci, all of which are among her sponsors.
“The whole schedule we plan is all around tennis. So all those events are not drawing [my energy] in any way. All the people that I work with, all brands that I work with, I choose them very carefully. I have to be really comfortable around those people, just so I’m not drawing my energy when I’m surrounded by them.
“I really enjoy my time with brands, with [the] people who work there. I have fun; it’s like my hobby outside of my tennis schedule. It actually gives me so much energy.”
Whatever one makes of that explanation, Sabalenka is hardly unique among the top players in using the US Open’s “fan week” to honour commercial obligations. According to Forbes, she has earned $23m (£17m) off the court over the past 12 months, a figure that, combined with $13.1m in prize money, placed her behind only Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz and Serena Williams on the list of the sport’s highest earners. Tennis may come first but, in a career where the peak years are all too brief, opportunities must be taken.
‘Think before you say stuff’
The larger question is just how worthwhile it was to revisit an issue Sabalenka had already addressed fairly fully, albeit with some exasperation, two days earlier. She was never likely to offer a different answer, but she was almost certain to be irritated – particularly when asked if, with the tournament proper underway, she was now “getting serious”.
“Oh yeah, I wasn’t serious before that,” Sabalenka shot back sarcastically. “Think before you say stuff.”
In the reporter’s defence, the question, however ill-timed, did not appear to be deliberately provocative. Despite her 99-week stranglehold on the top ranking, Sabalenka is seeking redemption at the season’s final major for a second successive year. It is not what one would expect of an otherwise dominant world No 1, and while her difficulties last term were largely limited to the business end of majors, the narrative has changed since March, when she became only the fifth woman to complete the Sunshine Double of Indian Wells and Miami. She has not won a tournament since, yet her off-court activities – TikTok content, magazine shoots, Instagram posts, her popular vlog – have continued unabated. It is perfectly legitimate to wonder if she has taken her eye off the ball.
And let’s not forget Sabalenka did not need to react as she did. She could simply have rolled her eyes and trotted out the same response she gave two days earlier. She could have referred her interrogator to her previous answer, or declined to comment at all. Her tetchy response was therefore telling. Is she feeling the heat? You bet she is. But feeling it and dealing with it are two very different things, and it is the manner of her response that merits attention.
A mission to silence the doubters
Through to a sixth straight quarter-final at Flushing Meadows, a landmark last reached by Serena Williams in 2016, Sabalenka has yet to drop a set. Throughout, her determination has been palpable. It has not been all plain sailing – Kamilla Rakhimova tested her at times, while the wily American southpaw Taylor Townsend salvaged four service breaks from a 6-4, 6-3 defeat – but the four-time grand slam winner is clearly on a mission to silence the doubters. Better yet for the defending champion, she is enjoying it.
“I love matches like that, because it was really challenging,” Sabalenka said following her win over Townsend. “Going through tough challenges and overcoming those challenges, it definitely gives you really strong belief that you can do it. So this kind of match is really, like, a boost of confidence.”
That would seem timely, what with Linda Noskova, the Wimbledon champion and sixth seed, awaiting in the last eight. The pair have met twice before, with Sabalenka prevailing in straight sets on each occasion, but the Czech promises to be a tougher out this time. Against Marta Kostyuk, Noskova once again showcased the resilience that earned her a maiden grand slam title in SW19, winning in three tight sets after failing to convert match points that would have given her a straight-sets victory, just as she did against Karolina Muchova in the Wimbledon final. The matchup is sure to generate further noise, including the sound of Sabalenka’s critics sharpening their knives. Do not expect her to be listening.
“Throw tough challenges at me, I will come back only stronger,” Sabalenka said at the start of the tournament.
So far, she has been as good as her word.