Aryna Sabalenka always had the shots. Her problem was overthinking things. When the stakes were at their highest, the devastating form that carried the Belarusian to victory after victory on the regular tour would desert her. The more it happened, the more she would dwell on it, and the likelier it became to happen again. Sabalenka was trapped in a recurring cycle of underachievement.
“I was struggling with the grand slams, with all the emotions [I was] going through,” Sabalenka recalled at Wimbledon last summer. “After every slam I was so disappointed with myself that I couldn’t handle the pressure. I thought that I would never make it to the second week. I worked a lot with my psychologist and with my coach.”
Make it she did, however, reaching the semi-finals in SW19 to break a run of 14 majors without advancing beyond the fourth round. With her grand slam hoodoo finally broken, Sabalenka repeated her success at the US Open, her newfound mental strength again much in evidence as she reached the last four.
Strangely, though, it is now the world No 2’s tennis that is the problem – specifically her serve, which began misfiring towards the end of last season and has since deserted her almost entirely. In Adelaide, where Sabalenka began her Australian campaign, she hit a total of 39 double faults in two matches. In Melbourne, where she defeated Marketa Vondrousova 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 on Saturday to reach the last 16 of the Australian Open, she has racked up a further 41 in three matches.
That Sabalenka has survived to the second week is testament to her strength of will. The obvious irony is that a woman who once had all the shots but lacked the mentality is now relying on her mental strength to buttress her failing game.
But while Sabalenka’s path to the second week has been fraught with hazard – she has lost the opening set in each of her three matches so far – her travails may yet prove a blessing in disguise. The 23-year-old is consciously trying to banish negative thoughts and just play, which is probably all she ever needed to do in the first place. The approach has improved not only her serving (as she self-mockingly noted, she hit only 10 double faults against Vondrousova, nine less than she committed in the previous round against Wang Xinyu), but also her return game.
“I was just trying not to really focus on my serve,” said Sabalenka, who will play Estonia’s Kaia Kanepi next. “That’s what was working today. I wasn’t really thinking a lot about my serve, maybe because in the last matches I was able to break a lot of games. It’s given me a little confidence on the returning games. I wasn’t really worried about my service games, and that’s why maybe I served better today.”
Sabalenka hit 36 winners against Vondrousova and, with her baseline game in fine fettle, and her serving issues affording her little opportunity to worry about the fact she is playing a slam, it bodes well that she is trying to simplify things.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself about my serve, and in the last matches I was trying to control everything on my serve: my legs, my arm, the ball toss. It was overthinking,” Sabalenka admitted. “I just stopped thinking. Today, for example, I was focusing only on a good jump, and that’s it, because I have this muscle memory. I trusted myself today, much more than in the first matches.”
If Sabalenka can continue in that vein, trusting in her natural ball-striking ability while gradually reining in the double faults, it will be fascinating to see how far she can go. Clearly she would rather be clumping aces than worrying about the yips, but the harder she tries to remain sanguine about her her service woes, the less likely she is to succumb to the volatile temperament that has sometimes been her undoing in the past.
Elsewhere in the lower half of the draw, former world No 1 Simona Halep dismissed Danka Kovinic 6-2, 6-1 to set up a fourth-round meeting with Alizé Cornet, who marked her 32nd birthday with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 win over Tamara Zidansek of Slovenia, the 29th seed.
Iga Swiatek, who is seeded to meet Sabalenka in the last eight, ran out a 6-2 6-3 winner against Daria Kasatkina, the 25th-seeded Russian. Swiatek, the former French Open champion, will play Sorana Cirstea next after the Romanian defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the 10th seed, 6-3, 2-6, 6-2.
Danielle Collins, the 27th seed, won a battle of fire and ice against the Danish teenager Clara Tauson to book a fourth-round appointment with Elise Mertens. Collins, a former semi-finalist at Melbourne Park, shrugged off the loss of three match points in the 10th game of the decider to seal a 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 victory.