With Australian Open defeat, world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka has a Grand Slam finals problem

Aryna Sabalenka spoke haltingly when she addressed the crowd in Rod Laver Arena on Saturday evening after losing the Australian Open final to Elena Rybakina. Conceding that she was “speechless”—a declaration generally made by winners, not runners-up - Sabalenka laughed as she congratulated Rybakina, groped for words, lost her train of thought, directed a half-hearted jibe at her team.

Clearly, the No. 1 player in the world, so accustomed to crushing rivals with her power, was shell-shocked, still feeling the sting of the magnificent ace with which Rybakina punctuated her second victory at a Grand Slam event. Sure, veteran Madison Keys had KO’d Sabalenka on the same court a year earlier, but that was a one-off, a fairy tale. This loss was inflicted by a contemporary, a severe blow as well as a direct challenge to the way Sabalenka has been doing business on the WTA Tour. The score in the two hour and 16-minute clash was a symmetrical 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

“Sabalenka is used to having every match on her racquet,” broadcast analyst Chris Evert said in the aftermath. “She finally came up against an opponent who plays the same way. She did not have any control over the way Rybakina played. At the end of the day, she was the more solid player.”

The most surprising detail is that, after wresting control of the match late in the second set, and pulling out to a 3-0 lead in the decider, Sabalenka was unable to close it out. She was asked in her post-match pressure if she had any “regrets” about that, and replied.

“I think it was, like, really aggressive tennis—overall the whole match— and I feel like in that moment she had nothing to lose, so she stepped in and she played incredible points. Maybe I should have tried to be more aggressive on my serve, knowing that I have a break.” She added, “Of course, I have regrets. [I led] 3-Love and then it felt like in a few seconds it was 3-4, and I was down with a break. Great tennis from her, maybe not so smart from me.”

It wasn’t just great tennis from Rybakina, though. It was also great support from the winner’s coaching box, in a way that was fundamentally unprecedented at the majors. Tournament officials made the decision this year to put coaching pens right down in the corners of the court this year, enabling players to communicate more directly and efficiently with their teams. The impact was conspicuous.

After Sabalenka seized the initiative with a break to win the second set, Rybakina visibly faded. She seemed listless through the next few games, devoid of inspiration as she trudged back and forth along the baseline. Soon she was two points from finding herself down, 0-4, and she looked cooked. At that point, Rybakina’s controversial coach Stefano Vukov exhorted her to try harder, warning for all the world to see that she had “no energy.”

The admonition made Rybakina snap out of her lethargy. She won that game for 1-3. She roared through Sabalenka’s next service game to recover the break, and went on to win the next four as well to take a 5-3 lead that proved insurmountable.

This episode will be remembered as a testament to how profoundly new coaching rules are altering the game. Players are no longer tasked with solving their problems alone, on the trot—a feature once unique to tennis.  Coaches loom ever larger in the public eye, strategy and tactics are openly discussed with viewers privy to the conversations. Something has been gained, but something has been lost as well.

The dominant theme in this match was power. Although most pundits gave Sabalenka the edge in that department, the stats show just how evenly matched lean, pale Rybakina was with her muscular, bronzed opponent. Top serve speed for each woman was 118 mph. Sabalenka’s first serve percentage (62%) was seven percentage points higher, but Rybakina won more of her first serve points (by a mere percentage point (76% to 75%). They had an identical 48% success rate on second-serve points. The most notable difference was Rybakina’s superiority in converting break points (3 of 6 while Sabalenka was 2 of 8).

Sabalenka is now 4-4 in Grand Slam finals, a record that rankles. You can tell, because she likes to joke about it. “I feel like I lost most of the finals I made in the Grand Slams, isn’t it? Okay, 4-4. I guess I'm okay.”

Two of those losses in major finals occurred last year, when Sabalenka was beaten by Keys and also by Coco Gauff at the French Open. But she sees no pattern emerging, either in the big picture or in the specific matches.

“I take each loss individually, because it was different players almost every time and different problems that I was facing during the matches, different mistakes” she said.” Some of them were great matches, I played incredible. So, I guess I take them individually.”

She added that she feels better about this loss than previous ones in terms of her level of play, decision making, and mentality throughout the match. “I was still there (tonight), I was ready to fight, I knew that she's not going to give it to me easily.  I think, overall, I made a huge improvement on that, and I still lost it. But it's okay. I feel like I'm moving towards the right direction.”

After a course correction of her own, Rybakina also is on the move. There appear to be still more collisions between unstoppable forces and immovable objects in store for us.