‘Just Shut Up and Wait’ – Aryna Sabalenka Discloses Mental Health Lesson From Coco Gauff Controversy

Aryna Sabalenka is known for her highly competitive presence on the court. But behind the scenes, she has struggled to manage her intense on-court rage, which reached a highly publicized boiling point at the 2025 French Open final, where she lost to Coco Gauff.

Now, in a revealing new cover story for TIME magazine, the Belarusian gave an unfiltered look into her mental health journey, parting ways with her sports psychologist for a while, and what she learned from that controversy.

Aryna Sabalenka Reveals How Coco Gauff Controversy Changed Her Approach to Tough Losses

Last June, after a 6-7 (5-7) 6-2 6-4 loss to the American, Sabalenka said, “It was honestly the worst tennis I’ve played in I don’t know how many months.”

But what she added afterward raised so many eyebrows: “I think she won the match not because she played incredibly, just because I made all of those mistakes from, if you look from the outside, easy balls.”

Sabalenka also claimed that the balls were ‘magically appearing’ on the court and said that if Iga Swiatek had been in her place, she would have beaten Gauff, comments that appeared to undermine Gauff’s hard-fought victory.

After Gauff responded to the comments, saying she did not agree with them, Sabalenka apologized to Gauff. They even did a TikTok video together, mending the fences.

In her interview for TIME magazine, Sabalenka opened up about the harsh lessons she learned from the whole fiasco.

“Just shut up and wait a little bit longer before you go to the press-conference room,” she candidly told the magazine. “Speak with your team before you actually decide to say something. Every time I lose a big match, there’s a room full of people waiting for the moment. No. Not gonna happen.”

Meanwhile, following last year’s Roland Garros, Sabalenka also made the difficult choice to step away from her sports psychologist. She found herself relying too much on outside help rather than trusting her own instincts.

“I feel like at some point I started to overthink about psychology,” she explained. “I would rely a lot on that and forget about focusing on my tennis. So I decided to step away from it to learn on my own how to control myself. No one else understands myself better than me.”

SEE ALSO: ‘Never Have Anything To Lose’ – Clijsters Draws Serena Williams Parallel As Aryna Sabalenka Concerns Mount

However, after her quarterfinal exit at the 2026 French Open, Sabalenka reconnected with her sports psychologist to clear her head ahead of Wimbledon. “I contacted her. I didn’t want to find someone else because you have to go through the whole story, you have to tell your whole story, and make the other person understand you deeper,” added the four-time Grand Slam winner.

This year, Sabalenka has won three titles, including the Sunshine Double in March. In the major tournaments and WTA 1000 events since then, she suffered unexpected knockouts. Her last match was a Round of 16 loss to Ekaterina Alexandrova at the National Bank Open in Toronto. Now, she will shift her focus to Cincinnati before heading to the US Open, where she is the defending champion.

This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.