She’s set to face Iga Swiatek—the WTA’s world No. 1 vs. No. 2—in a rematch of last year’s excellent three-set title match.
Sometimes, when you want to win a match so badly, you make yourself too tense to play your best. Everything feels forced. Nothing flows.
For a set and a half in Madrid on Thursday, that’s what happened to Aryna Sabalenka. The No. 2 seed always comes with fire and urgency, but she was doubly hyped-up to face Elena Rybakina in this WTA 1000 semifinal. Rybakina is a close rival of hers, a fellow major champion and member of the Top 5, and a woman who had beaten her in three of their last four meetings. Sabalenka vowed that, this time, she would get the first strike in. If she was going down, she was going down swinging. She won this title last year, and she knew that going on offense was the best way for her to defend it.
“The thing about us is we are both aggressive players,” Sabalenka said of her matchup with Rybakina. “When I was winning, I was focusing on myself and I was staying really aggressive on those key moments. When she was winning, she was more aggressive than me.”
“So I think the main key for me is just to focus on myself and to stay aggressive no mater what.”
“It’s just about to go there and be ready for a great battle.”
This match would be a great battle, but it took Sabalenka a long time to start waging it. She was out of sorts to start. Her ground strokes were misfiring, and when she did connect, Rybakina had a better response. Worse, Sabalenka was uptight about it. She was frustrated by every miss, staring at her team, throwing her arms in the air, demanding perfection when she obviously wasn’t close to it.
Meanwhile, the poker-faced Rybakina, who won the first set 6-1, was moving well and calmly going about her business. She parried Sabalenka’s attacks with more accuracy, and without any of the vocal angst. Each time Sabalenka seemed to find a groove, Rybakina would raise her game again. Serving at 2-1 in the second set, she saved two break points, and held with a drop shot winner. When Sabalenka finally broke her to make it 4-4, Rybakina broke right back with a brilliant crosscourt forehand, and served for the match at 5-4.
For the entire second set, Sabalenka had been banging on the door, but through nine games Rybakina had kept it shut tight. When she came back from 0-30 down to make it 30-30 at 5-4, it looked like it would stay that way again. Instead, Rybakina finally let the the door crack open. Set up with a short forehand and an open court, she tried to pull the ball the other way and somehow hit it wide. That’s all Sabalenka needed. She broke, held, and broke again for the set. Now she was the one moving well, and her errors had turned into winners.
If the first set was controlled by Rybakina, and the second was nabbed by Sabalenka, the third was a stand-off. The two held 12 straight times, and at one point won 22 straight service points between them. The only moment of danger came when Sabalenka faced two break points at 5-5. She had been loud all night, but she raised her voice another notch as she knocked off a forehand winner to save the first of those break points. Rybakina obliged her with an error on the other, and we were on to a well-deserved final-set tiebreaker.
This time the roles were reversed. This time Sabalenka started by firing on all cylinders and jumping out to a 5-1 lead. She hit a backhand pass on the run, a forehand winner, a service winner, and a backhand return winner that found the sideline. Now it was Rybakina’s turn to fight back. From 1-5, she hit a service winner, a forehand winner, and an ace, and saved two match points to make it 5-6.
That left Sabalenka win one more match point, on her own serve. She made the most of it, and powered to a photo-finish win, with a perfect first ball out wide sealing the 1-6, 7-5, 7-6 (5).
Sabalenka said she couldn’t have won without the late-night crowd’s energy. Particularly one fan’s.
“I heard someone screaming, ‘I want to see you on Saturday!’” Sabalenka said. It was inspiration enough.
A lot of people wanted to see her there on Saturday, when she’ll face Iga Swiatek. It will be No. 1 vs. No. 2, in a rematch of last year’s excellent three-set title match. Sabalenka should go into it with the knowledge that, if she keeps banging on the door, it might just open a crack.
