As Aryna Sabalenka has cemented herself at the top of her sport over the past two seasons, in so many of the biggest grand slam matches her greatest opponent has been herself. Even when she has come in radiating with confidence, her game in full bloom, her head so often gets in the way. Recovering from so many painful collapses has required resilience beyond measure.
Nowhere have these struggles been more evident than in New York, a city that perfectly suits her electrifying game and outsized personality but where the positives from her two semi-finals and a final in the past three years had been blunted by brutal losses.
At long last, Sabalenka held her nerve until the bitter end after two intense, tempestuous and high quality sets that pushed her to her mental limits. Sabalenka closed out her first US Open title with a supreme 7-5, 7-5 win over a gritty, defiant Jessica Pegula who battled desperately until the final ball.
With her third career grand slam title, Sabalenka, the second seed, has now won more major titles than any Belarusian tennis player, breaking her tie with Victoria Azarenka. She is just the fifth woman in the open era to win both hard-court grand slam titles in the same season after also winning the Australian Open this year.
Grand slams were once Sabalenka’s biggest weakness and she was well established as a top-10 player before even reaching her first quarter-final. She has now won three of the last four hard-court majors, her only loss coming in last year’s US Open final to Coco Gauff.
“After I lost my father, it’s always been my goal to put our family name in the history of tennis,” said Sabalenka. “Every time I see my name on that trophy, I’m so proud of myself, I’m proud of my family that they never gave up on my dream and that they were doing everything they could to keep me going. I had this opportunity in life, so it really means a lot. It’s been always my dream. I still kind of cannot believe that me with my team, we were able to achieve so much already.”
This matchup marked a battle between the two best players of the summer, with Pegula having won the Canadian Open in Toronto before Sabalenka defeated Pegula in the Cincinnati final. In their most recent match, Sabalenka simply overwhelmed Pegula with her power.
In what turned out to be a breathless tussle of the highest quality, the opening set initially moved in a similar direction. Pegula, the sixth seed, used her immaculate timing and hand skills to deflect Sabalenka’s pace as well as she could while maintaining excellent depth and consistency, but the second seed’s superior weight of shot decided the majority of the points. Sabalenka also showed her improved variety by continually closing out points at the net.
After recovering from an early break, Sabalenka served for the set at 5-3. Pegula responded with a brilliant return game while the crowd increasingly imposed itself in the match, their cheers amplified under the Arthur Ashe Stadium roof. Sabalenka blinked, spraying forehand errors as she lost her serve. She found herself down a break point at 5-5 after a double fault and lost her composure, repeatedly striking the ground with her racket, but recovered immediately. She saved break point with an 84mph serve and then drilled an incredible backhand down the line. After holding, it would take five set points on Pegula’s serve before Sabalenka finally put the set away.
Just as it seemed that the 26-year-old was running away with the match, Pegula sharpened her focus. From 0-3, 30-40 down, the American forced herself to take the first strike in rallies, redirecting the ball off both wings brilliantly and she gradually reeled in an increasingly errant Sabalenka. Pegula rolled through five games in a row to lead 5-3.
A year ago, Sabalenka had established a one-set lead over Gauff in the final before she spectacularly unravelled over the next two sets and a deafening US crowd that got into the Belarusian’s head. After her semi-final win over America’s Emma Navarro on Thursday, Sabalenka admitted that she had flashbacks to last year after failing to serve out the match and getting pulled into a tie-break.
For a moment, history seemed to be repeating itself again. But Sabalenka took a deep breath, drawing on the years of work that have gone into harnessing her emotions, steadied herself and marched through the final four games of the match to finally clinch the US Open title she had waited so patiently for.
“Today I just keep reminding myself that this is the US Open final, of course she’s going to fight really hard for it and it’s not going to be easy, and I have to work really hard to get it,” she said. “In those tough moments, I was just trying to stay strong and trying to remind myself that I have been through a lot and I’m strong enough to hold under this pressure.”
As Sabalenka closed out a tremendous victory and the fell to the floor, her first thought upon becoming the US Open champion was of all the excruciating near misses she has had to endure in order to become the player she is today. “I was just so proud of myself and proud of my team that no matter what, we were able to come back stronger and come back with better tennis. And now finally we are having this beautiful trophy.”
