NEW YORK – In the club of three-time winners. Aryna Sabalenka shook off her American sorrows, won the US Open and added the third Grand Slam of her career at the age of 26. She also beat the ‘challenges’ that life put in her way.
‘I was so close to winning here and I finally did it. I’m proud of myself,’ said the Belarusian tennis player after beating Jessica Pegula 7-5, 7-5 in an unpredictable and vibrant match at Arthur Ashe Stadium, where the home crowd put her under pressure that she was able to control.
With the trophy already in her possession, sitting in the ESPN studio next to the event’s top champion, Chris Evert, Sabalenka spoke about the consequences that the tragic moments she experienced mid-season indirectly brought her.
‘I didn’t stop pushing myself after certain challenges life threw at me”, the world number two explained. She kept going full steam ahead despite the emotional blows.
In March, Konstantin Koltsov, by then her recently ex partner, committed suicide in Miami, where Sabalenka was due to play in the Miami Open. The Belarusian fought off the emotional blow, played that tournament, and then faced the clay tour intensely, where she added finals in Rome and Madrid, and made the quarter-finals at Roland Garros.
Her body took its toll on her after so much effort and she had to withdraw from Wimbledon due to a shoulder injury. She had never missed a Grand Slam in her career.
She also missed the Olympic Games. So she was able to recover for the North American tour, where she hoped to chase away the ghosts of past experiences that awaited her in New York: the US Open had been until the evening of 7 September 2024 a tournament where she collected painful moments on the court.
In 2021 she lost in the semi-finals to Leylah Fernandez in three sets, when everyone thought she was going to win the tournament as the second seed and the only top 5 player to survive the quarter-finals.
In 2022, also in the semi-finals, she let slip a 4-2 lead in the deciding set against Iga Swiatek; and in 2023, in the final against Coco Gauff she could not cope with the noisy home crowd.
‘I remembered all my defeats here and this time I knew how to control my emotions,’ acknowledged Sabalenka, who matched Angelique Kerber’s 2016 feat by winning the Australian Open and US Open in the same season.
The ‘best player in the world on hard courts’ and who ‘takes the racquet out of your hand’ because of how hard she hits the ball according to Pegula, will have a night of celebration to remember with her current boyfriend Georgios Frangulis and her coaching staff.
Or maybe she won’t even be able to remember a thing: ‘We’ll probably drink a lot. We’ll go to the bar and stay until tomorrow’.
The US Open title is celebrated as it is lived in the busy and always lively city of New York.
