After the racket-smashing rage of Melbourne and the tantrum in Paris, Aryna Sabalenka’s US Open title was celebrated in a giddy haze of champagne.
The back-to-back champion and her team drenched each other in Moet and Chandon in the locker room, scenes more reminiscent of a football team’s title celebration than tennis.
The world No1 then sashayed into her press conference wearing Moet goggles – to stop the spray getting in her eyes – and clutching an open bottle, tipsily announcing: ‘Hello everybody! It’s going to be a fun media.’
Festivities continued, with Sabalenka, asked by Sloane Stephens how she would celebrate, telling her fellow US Open champion: ‘Oh girl we gonna drink.’
It was in alcohol that Sabalenka sought solace after defeat to Coco Gauff in the French Open final, heading off to Mykonos for ‘tequila and gummies’. During that holiday, the seeds of this victory in New York were sown.
‘I was in Mykonos, reading my book, enjoying the view and I was just thinking: “Why would I let my emotions take control over me in those two finals (the French and Australian Opens)?
‘Going into this final I decided for myself that I’m going to control my emotions and it doesn’t matter what happens in the match.’
Jason Stacey, Sabalenka’s mindset and fitness coach, said before the final: ‘She started reading a certain book. It all came together. For us that was a really nice thing that she started to actually initiate wanting to figure some things out, get things out of her head. Because before she would have a habit of keeping it to herself until it becomes something bigger. That was pretty impressive to see.’
The book in question is Into the Magic Shop, by neuroscientist James R Doty.
‘It’s about the brain, a real story of how the guy learned how to control himself, how to not overthink.
‘Reading that book, I realized a lot of things. That book really helped me to stay focused and to focus on the right things on important points.
‘I had so many friends of mine reading that book and recommending it, saying, Oh, my God, you have to read it, this book is incredible. So I was, like, OK. It was the right moment for me to go for that book.’
The lessons learned reading on the sun lounger in Mykonos were put into practice on Arthur Ashe. Serving for the match, at 30-30, Sabalenka dragged a sitter of a smash into the net and was broken back.
A few years – perhaps even a few months – ago, that would have sent the 27-year-old into a negative spiral. This time she recentred herself and played a superb tiebreak to take the match.
Sabalenka showed how far her tennis game has developed, too. Facing one of the few players who plays more aggressively, and hits the ball harder, than her, she produced a defensive of performance of which, early in her career, one would not have thought her capable.
She sliced the ball back and got down low to redirect Anisimova’s low bullet groundstrokes.
‘She plays really aggressive tennis,’ said Sabalenka. ‘I think that at Wimbledon (when Anisimova beat her in the semi-finals) I was overthinking. I was doubting my decisions, I was stopping my arms a lot, I was making a lot of mistakes. If not a mistake, I would just slow down the speed and then she would just step in and go for her winners.
‘So going into this match, I knew that it’s going to be very fast game, very aggressive. I was just trying to stay as low as possible. I was just trying to put that speed, that pressure back on her and see how she can handle it.’
As she has with each of her four Grand Slam titles, two here and two in Australia, Sabalenka dedicated the win to her father, Sergey, who died in 2019 aged just 43.
‘When he passed away, I was very depressed,’ she said. ‘It was a tough for me, for my family.
‘But in that moment, I decided to take it as motivation, to put our family name in the history. I want to believe, and I think I feel his protection from up there, and I know that he became my power. So it means a lot.’
