Aryna Sabalenka is unquestionably a powerhouse, but her greatest asset is not a thunderbolt serve or the bludgeoning groundstrokes with which she pummels her opponents into submission. Sabalenka’s most potent weapon lies between the ears.
A case in point came with the Belarusian fifth seed serving against Poland’s Magdalena Linette for a place in the Australian Open final. She had already missed three match points in the previous game and, as she snatched impatiently at a backhand and the ball clipped the net tape, falling just short of the scampering Linette’s outstretched racket, Sabalenka’s anxiety was clear. Moments later, she delivered her first double fault of the set.
The serving difficulties the 24-year-old experienced last year are well documented. So too is the remedial work she did with Gavin MacMillan, a biomechanics expert who helped her to remodel her service motion. What is less often talked about is the mental strength that enabled Sabalenka to compete for most of last season without the cornerstone of her game. It says something when a player can hit 428 double faults in a year but still make finals in Stuttgart and Rosmalen, advance to the fourth round of the Australian Open, and end the campaign in surging style by reaching the US Open semi-finals and the title round at the WTA Finals.
Against Linette, Sabalenka showed her steel again, finding four first serves – including a 116mph ace – to seal a 7-6, (7-1), 6-2 victory that sees her advance to a first grand slam final. There, she will face Elena Rybakina, the Wimbledon champion, who claimed a 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 win over former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka. Already, it is being billed as a battle of power against power.
In some ways it will be exactly that, given the obvious stylistic similarities between the two big-serving, big-hitting women. Yet the slower conditions at this year’s tournament, where there have been complaints about the balls rapidly losing pressure and fluffing up, suggest brute force will not be the only factor. The greater emotional control to which Sabalenka has attributed her recent good form has been mirrored in her shot-making, with the Belarusian frequently favouring placement and spin over pure velocity. No doubt there has also been an element of tailoring her game to the conditions, a necessity Rybakina acknowledged as she looked ahead to the final.
“Maybe I will not have to serve that big, that fast, so it doesn’t really matter the speed,” said Rybakina, who defeated top seed Iga Swiatek in the last 16. “It’s important to have a good placement on the serve. In these conditions, to serve full, full power, it’s not easy. The ball is not really going.
“Same on the baseline. Just to play more deeper and do the same thing, try to come forward, just to expect maybe longer rallies than usual.”
It would be wrong to imagine that similar thoughts have not occurred to Sabalenka. Yet it is easy to see her simply as a human wrecking ball. A title winner in Adelaide before the Australian Open, she has now won 10 matches in a row without dropping a set. She has been striking her forehand with such venom that, as the former Australian player Casey Dellacqua informed her after her semi-final victory, her average ball speed (approximately 86mph) is comparable to the leading men. She certainly had too much force for Linette, whose defensive skills and ability to absorb and redirect the power coming at her only lasted until the first-set tiebreak, at which point Sabalenka stepped on the pedal and left the Pole for dust.
Yet the true measure of Sabalenka’s strength is not the weaponry at her disposal, or the speed at which she deploys it, but the mental steel that allows her to approach the game as she does in the first place. The Belarusian has often been criticised for lacking a fallback strategy, a plan B for those days when more is required than simply trying to rip the cover off the ball. Less attention is paid to the courage and self-belief that allows her to smoke every ball from start to finish. Like Caroline Garcia, another specialist in all-out attack, Sabalenka has a game style that requires a deep reservoir of conviction.
It says something too that Sabalenka, channelling a newfound calmness, has been able to put the loss of her three previous grand slam semi-finals behind her. Only Gabriela Sabatini, Zina Garrison, Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati have shown comparable resilience in the open era. Having made her first final, however, Sabalenka is not done yet. She wants more, as her measured reaction to beating Linette indicated.
“There is still one more match to go,” she said. “It’s good that I broke through in the semi-finals, but there is one more match to go. I just want to stay focused.”
With power not the be all and end all, the mental battle will be intriguing. Having finally broken her semi-final duck, will Sabalenka approach the match with a newfound sense of liberation? Or will the experience Rybakina gained at the All England Club last summer, the knowledge of how to navigate a grand slam final, prove decisive? It certainly served the Kazakh well as she fought back from a break down against Azarenka to seal a straight-sets win.
“For me, this time I would say it was a bit easier compared to Wimbledon, when I was playing for the first time quarters, semis, final,” said the 23-year-old, who frequently struggled on serve against Azarenka. “I knew that I have to focus on every point. I think in the end I did really well.”
Rybakina, seeded 22nd, did not earn ranking points for her Wimbledon victory because of the WTA’s decision to strip the tournament of points in response to its ban on Russian and Belarusian players. Come what may on Saturday, she will finally move into the top 10 for the first time next week, a ranking more commensurate with her ability. It should spell an end to her days of being relegated to the backwaters of the outside courts.
As for Sabalenka, she says she will prepare as normal for the biggest match of her career.
“I’m not going to do something extra,” she said. “I think it’s okay to feel a little bit nervous. It’s a big tournament, big final. If you’re going to start trying to do something about that, it’s going to become bigger, you know?”
Sabalenka has done more than most to show she can take a challenge in her stride.