As Aryna Sabalenka walked out to serve midway through the opening set of her Stuttgart Open semi-final against Paula Badosa, an unusual request echoed through the darkness of the Porsche Arena. “The lights, please,” intoned chair umpire Julie Kjendlie by way of a polite reminder that, while dimming the stage during changeovers is all well and good, the ability to see is a fairly basic requirement for tennis players.
The lights duly flicked back on to reveal Sabalenka, the Belarusian third seed, primed and ready to go on the basline. It felt like an appropriate metaphor. After a season of struggle and strife, Sabalenka has emerged from the darkness this week to recapture something of the form that carried her to the last four at Wimbledon and the US Open last year. Here, she once again played with power, purpose and courage to see out a 7-6 (7-5), 6-4 victory against second seed Badosa, her friend and doubles partner, that takes her through to the final against Iga Swiatek, who later extended her unbeaten streak to 22 matches with a 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-5 win over the unseeded Russian Liudmila Samsonova.
It is the second year in a row that Sabalenka, who has not reached a final for almost a year, has reached the title round in Stuttgart, and the turnaround feels long overdue for a player whose blazing firepower is a match for anyone in the world on her day. Sabalenka’s problems, which began in earnest when her serve deserted her before the Australian Open, have been as much between the ears as between the lines, but there has been no faulting her resolve over the past week. Having arrived in Germany with just one win from her previous four matches, the 23-year-old has looked more like her old self with each passing round.
Sabalenka, who battled past former US Open champion Bianca Andreescu in her opening match before ending Anett Kontaveit’s 22-match unbeaten streak indoors to reach the last four, offered further evidence that she has rediscovered her mojo by staging an impressive recovery from 5-2 down in the opening set. She went on to clinch a tiebreak in which she trailed 4-1. Notably, when double faults crept into her game, as was the case at the start of the breaker, the Belarusian never allowed her head to drop.
Sabalenka’s growing confidence was underlined by a meaty second-serve ace – one of nine untouchable deliveries that whistled beyond Badosa over the course of an enthralling hour and 40 minutes – at 5-5 in the tiebreak. It was precisely the kind of high-risk, high-reward moment on which Sabalenka’s success has been predicated.
“Honestly, I thought like, ‘You have to risk it, just got for it.’ I didn’t want to make it an ace, I just wanted to make it in, but somehow I made it an ace,” said Sabalenka on court afterwards.
“I just feel like if I trust my game and I stay aggressive and I risk sometimes, I feel like I control much more than [if] I just try to put the ball in. Then I get tight and miss. That’s why I go for my shots – I feel better that way.”
Sabalenka’s sense of wellbeing will not have been shared by Badosa, who was always likely to be walking a tightrope here after surviving back-to-back marathons against Elena Rybakina and Ons Jabeur to reach the last four. Having fought tigerishly to achieve the victories required to displace Barbora Krejcikova as world No 2, a career landmark that will be confirmed when the updated rankings are published on Monday, another three-set battle proved beyond the Spaniard.
But what resistance Badosa mounted, defending brilliantly in the face of Sabalenka’s flamethrower groundstrokes and unsettling changes of pace to establish early control of a match in which she rarely looked as comfortable as her initial scoreline superiority suggested. She frequently gave as good as she got, though, lashing winners off the ground and serving with intelligence and variety as she alternated between pulling Sabalenka wide and tying her up with deliveries into the body.
The quality of the shot-making was epitomised by a tit-for-tat exchange of slingshot down-the-line backhand winners in the heart of the tiebreak. Barely had the crowd caught their collective breath before a sinew-stretching rally ended with Sabalenka flicking a brilliant forehand winner into the open court. The Belarusian cancelled out an early break in the second set with some more immense hitting off the ground, and when she shrugged off a net-cord winner that gave Badosa a break point for a 5-4 lead with a smile and a huge serve, it was clear it would be her day.
“She’s the toughest opponent,” said Sabalenka, who had lost her two previous meetings with Badosa, most recently at last year’s WTA Finals. “I just tried to stay in that [first] set as long as I could and tried to fight for every point and get the break back. It was a tough match and I’m super happy with the result.”
Sabalenka will be happier still if she can avenge her defeat to Swiatek in the Doha quarter-finals two months ago. Swiatek’s title run in the Qatari capital marked the start of a remarkable winning streak that has included the “sunshine double” of Indian Wells and Miami, and seen her rise to world No 1 following the shock retirement of Ashleigh Barty. But the 20-year-old was made to work long and hard by Samsonova, who ended Swiatek’s run of 28 consecutive sets by fighting back from 4-1 down in the first set to claim it on a tiebreak. The big-serving Russian threatened an encore in the decider when she overturned a 3-1 deficit, but Swiatek narrowly held on to see out the victory in three hours and three minutes.
“I have no idea how I came back,” said Swiatek, who outclassed US Open champion Emma Raducanu in the quarter-finals. “I didn’t want to give up. I was trying to find solutions, even though some things were pretty frustrating. I think Liudmila played a great match… it was super tough and we both were fighting until the last ball.”
Swiatek and Sabalenka have faced each there on four previous occasions, with honours even following the Pole’s win in Doha. Sabalenka was caught cold by Swiatek’s more aggressive style of play in that match, a feature of the world No 1’s game that has improved markedly under new coach Tomasz Witkorowski, but the Belarusian vowed she would be ready for anything this time around.
“That match [in Doha] surprised me, because she played super fast and super aggressive, not [like] she used to play, and I would say I was surprised in every point she was making,” said Sabalenka.
“Now as she won three titles in a row, that’s not going to surprise me. I’ll be ready for this game, and I’ll be ready for a fight, and the winners she’s going to make are not going to surprise me. I think mentally that’s going to give me a little power to compete, no matter what.”
One way or another, Sabalenka is no longer in the dark.