Aryna Sabalenka won the US Open by beating the toughest opponent: her own emotions

ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK – You cannot become Aryna Sabalenka, the world’s No. 1-ranked tennis player, without the occasional humiliation. When you play as many big matches as she has, with as bold of a game as she plays — and almost always with the pressure of being the favorite — there is nowhere to hide when something goes wrong.

Sabalenka would be the first to tell you she has not always handled that part of the job very well.

As much as she’s won, her résumé is filled with Grand Slam titles she has given away. When something goes wrong and the Vesuvius of emotions begins to bubble through her 6-foot body, the fallout has often been ugly.

“I thought if I made it to the final, it means I’m going to win it and didn’t expect players to come out and fight,” she said Saturday night. “I thought everything was going to go easily my way, which was completely wrong mindset.”

And the scene was set for a repeat late Saturday afternoon inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Sabalenka had thoroughly outplayed Amanda Anisimova, creeping within two points of her second straight US Open title. She had whacked a forehand that sent Anisimova sprinting from corner-to-corner, a ball that would win the point at least 90 percent of the time. Somehow, Anisimova scrambled to get her racket on it, lofting it high in the air. All Sabalenka had to do was smash it with a simple overhead into the open court.

Instead, it went into the bottom of the net.

The Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd, begging for a reason to engage with the match, erupted. Anisimova, for the first time all day, felt like something may start to go her way. And Sabalenka, who has felt the weight of those potential turning points in plenty of Grand Slam finals past, knew the way she responded would be everything.

“I was really close to losing it,” she said. “Because you can’t make these kind of mistakes on important points.”

In the initial shock of that moment, Sabalenka dropped her racket, pursed her lips and flashed a sheepish look toward her coaches’ box.

But instead of erupting, she closed her eyes. She inhaled deeply. And most of all, she got back to work.

“I’m really proud of myself,” she said.

Roughly 15 minutes later, Sabalenka became a four-time major champion, wrapping up a 6-3, 7-6 (3) win over Anisimova that seemed very much in danger of entering Aryna’s House of Horrors after that overhead miss.

This year alone, Sabalenka lost a third-set gut check to Madison Keys in the Australian Open final. At the French Open, she was up a set on Coco Gauff and seemingly on a collision course to the title until the windy conditions and Gauff’s pesky defense got under her skin. And at Wimbledon, Anisimova was the mentally tougher player in the third set of their semifinal meeting, marking three desperately close losses to American players at the majors.

But the history of Sabalenka meltdowns is much longer than that, particularly at the US Open. She was the overwhelming favorite here in 2021 but lost the plot completely in the semifinals against unseeded longshot Leylah Fernandez. In the 2023 final, also against Gauff, she was deeply impacted by the crowd rooting against her and struggled to keep the ball in the court.

The track record suggested that such a dramatic miss, so close to the finish line, could have been one of those moments where her world collapsed again.

But this is a different Sabalenka. It may have taken a full season to get there, but the reward was more than worth the price.

“After Australian Open, thought the right way would be to forget it and move on, but then the same thing happened at the French,” she said. “So after that I figured maybe it’s time for me to sit back and look at those finals and maybe learn something because I didn’t want it to happen again and again and again. I was in Mykonos reading my book enjoying the view and thinking, ‘Why would I let my emotions take control over me?’”

“Going into this final, I decided I’m going to control my emotions. I’m not going to let them take control over me.”

Here’s the flip side of Sabalenka’s fragile history in these moments: She had plenty of experience, and she knew the problem.

This time, when the test arrived, she was more prepared than ever.

Though Anisimova converted the break after her opponent’s shockingly wayward smash and then held serve for a 6-5 lead in the second set, Sabalenka’s newfound composure paid off. She ran through a dominant service game to send the set to a tiebreaker and was the far steadier player. After Anisimova opened with an ace, she committed errors on the next five points to put Sabalenka in commanding position.

When Anisimova’s final shot sailed wide, Sabalenka fell to her knees and put her hands over her face. She stayed down on the baseline for a few more moments, her body convulsing, before getting up to reveal a 1,000-watt smile as if it was her first Grand Slam title.

This one was different.

“It felt like I had to overcome a lot of things to get this one,” she said. “I knew with the hard work I put in, I deserved to have a Grand Slam title this season so it was true emotions because it means a lot to defend this title and to bring such great tennis and to bring the fight and be able to handle my emotions the way I did. It means a lot and I’m super proud.”

Sabalenka has put herself in these moments more than any women’s player in the post-Serena Williams era, making 11 semifinals out of the last 12 Grand Slams she’s played. It’s a remarkable run of consistency, but it often felt like Sabalenka’s successes were overshadowed by her most dramatic and high-profile failures.

With her fourth Grand Slam title, won by tamping down her worst impulses at the very moment she needed self-control to pull her through, it’s time for that narrative to change forever.