After opening the biggest match of her life with a double fault, Aryna Sabalenka gave a wry half smile, then clouted down the first of 17 aces.
Some two and a half hours later, after sending a 102mph second serve long on her first championship point, Sabalenka came up with a yet more telling response to a double fault, holding firm and holding serve to complete a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 fightback against Elena Rybakina and win the Australian Open.
In those two moments, the Belarusian offered a perfect vignette of the extraordinary mental strength that, at the age of 24, has earned her a first grand slam title and returned her to No 2 in the world. This time last year, Sabalenka couldn’t buy a second serve, racking up 39 doubles faults in two matches in Adelaide, and a further 56 in four rounds at Melbourne Park. But the self-proclaimed Queen of Double Faults has officially abdicated, helped on her way by a biomechanics specialist who helped her to remodel her serve, by a team who never stopped believing in her, but above all by a strength of will that knows no bounds.
“I was like, ‘Well, it’s going to be fun after the double fault,’” smiled Sabalenka as she reflected on the final game.
“Of course, I was a little bit nervous. I kept telling myself, ‘Nobody tells you that it’s going to be easy, you just have to work for it, work for it till the last point.’ [That] was a tough game. I’m super happy that I was able to handle all those emotions and win.”
Sabalenka has always gone about the business of winning tennis matches in her own inimitable way. The problem, for a player who had lost three of her four previous grand slam semi-finals, was harnessing her withering power and unyielding commitment to attack sufficiently to win seven matches in a row. Over the course of an Australian summer that began with victory in Adelaide and saw her drop just one set in 11 matches, Sabalenka has finally effected a perfect marriage of clarity and conviction. She has tamed her combustible nature – “less negative emotions,” as she put it after her semi-final win over Poland’s Magda Linette – and discovered how to deploy her extraordinary firepower with greater purpose.
“I learned that I have to be a little bit calmer on court and I don’t have to rush things,” said Sabalenka. “I just have to play my game, be calm, and believe in myself, that I can actually get it. I think during these two weeks I really was super calm on court, and I really believed in myself a lot, that my game will give me a lot of opportunities in each game to win this title.”
In an absorbing contest between two of the finest servers in the women’s game, it was Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion, who drew first blood, her deep, powerful returns ramping up the pressure on her opponent’s second serve as she secured an early break. Like Sabalenka, the 23-year-old has been in outstanding form over the fortnight, defeating a trio of grand slam champions in Iga Swiatek, Jelena Ostapenko and Victoria Azarenka, and she was the more assured player here initially, serving with greater consistency and manoeuvring her opponent into the corners during the baseline exchanges. Sabalenka manufactured a break of her own in the eighth game, but a pair of double faults promptly cost the Belarusian her delivery for a second time, and Rybakina served out the set emphatically.
If it took Sabalenka time to find her range, the wait was worthwhile. As she began to work the rallies, targeting Rybakina’s less reliable forehand side and hitting with increased depth and potency, the momentum began to shift. Sabalenka broke in the fourth game and then consolidated her advantage under pressure. For the first time, the normally impassive Rybakina began to show signs of frustration, even shaping to slam her racket into the ground at one point. Rybakina remained defiant, repeatedly fighting off break points, but Sabalenka was not to be denied, levelling the match with back-to-back aces.
The pair matched each other step for step down the stretch, the ball-striking immense, the quality from both frequently breath-taking. Sabalenka finally made the decisive breakthrough in the seventh game, almost knocking Rybakina off her feet with a huge backhand return and then prudently allowing a defensive lob to bounce before slotting it away. Sabalenka would finish with a remarkable 51 winners to just 28 unforced errors.
“Aryna raised her level in the second set,” said Rybakina, who will become a top-10 player for the first time on Monday. “She played really well, aggressive, a bit less mistakes. I should have been also more aggressive in some moments.
“I had some chances, for sure, to turn it around. But she played really well today. She was strong mentally, physically.”
As Rybakina sent one final forehand sailing beyond the baseline, Sabalenka slumped to the floor and laid weeping. In that moment, it was hard not to recall Rybakina’s markedly more sober reaction to her Wimbledon victory. They may have similar characteristics as players, but as characters Sabalenka and Rybakina could not be more different. The pair nonetheless shared a warm embrace before Sabalenka headed to her box, where the tears continued.
In heart-warming scenes, Sabalenka’s coach, Anton Dubrov, remained overcome with emotion for some time afterwards, perhaps affording another contrast following some of the negative criticism levelled at Rybakina’s coach, Stefano Vukov, in recent days. Sabalenka becomes the first neutral grand slam champion, with no country or flag associated with her victory in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but she was less interested in that afterwards than in conveying her thanks to her team in her winners’ speech.
“We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs the last year,” said the champion. “We worked so hard. You guys deserve this trophy, it’s more about you than me.”
It could never quite be that, of course. Not from a player who dispensed with the services of her psychologist in the off-season because she felt she needed to fix her own problems. Now that she has solved the conundrum of how to win a grand slam, Sabalenka will take some stopping.