World No. 1 Aryna defends title by defeating American giant-killer Amanda Anisimova in straight sets; insists she handled her emotions better than what she did during final losses at Australian Open and French Open this year
Belarusian World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka with the US Open winner’s trophy in New York on Saturday. Pic/Getty Images
Aryna Sabalenka was two points away from what eventually would be a second consecutive US Open title when she failed to dispatch a routine overhead smash. Instead, while backpedaling, she dumped the ball into the net, giving her opponent, Amanda Anisimova, a break chance.
After that excruciating miss on Saturday, the Belarusian World No. 1 dropped her racquet and smiled a rueful smile. She began to feel the sort of emotions that got the better of her during losses in the finals at the Australian Open in January and French Open in June bubble up.
‘I just let the doubt get into my head. But then I turned around and I took a deep breath in, and I was like, ‘Ok. It happens. It’s in the past. Let’s focus on the next one’,” explained Sabalenka. It took another 15 minutes to complete the job, but Sabalenka eventually beat the American World No. 9 in straight sets — 6-3, 7-6 (7-3).
The result made her the first woman to win consecutive trophies at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 2012-14. It was also Sabalenka’s fourth major trophy — all achieved on hard courts. More importantly, she avoided becoming the first woman to lose three major finals in a season since Justine Henin in 2006.
The 27-year-old was the runner-up to Madison Keys at Melbourne Park and to Coco Gauff at Roland-Garros. Sabalenka felt she learned a lot from those defeats.
“After the Australian Open, I thought that the right way would be just to forget it and move on. But then the same thing happened at the French Open. So after that, I figured that it’s time for me to sit back and to look at those finals and to maybe learn something, because I didn’t want it to happen again. To bring the fight and be able to handle my emotions the way I did in this final, it means a lot. I’m super proud of myself,” she said.
Meanwhile, Anisimova, who beat Grand Slam winners Naomi Osaka and Iga Swiatek en-route to the final, admitted she didn’t ‘fight hard enough.’ “I didn’t fight hard enough for my dreams today. That’s the reality. I felt like I wasn’t playing my best tennis today,” she said.
11
No of years since the US Open women’s singles title was last defended (by Serena Williams in 2014)
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