Anisimova has a no-frills game – all power and no subtlety, she looked to use that to blow Sabalenka off the court.<\/p>\n
The fluctuations, though, were too much and ultimately the reason behind another emotional Grand Slam defeat.<\/p>\n
Anisimova came out firing and bludgeoned her flat groundstrokes as she went for the margins.<\/p>\n
It created three break points in the first game before Sabalenka recovered to hold and break for 2-0, but cracking more winners enabled Anisimova to turn the deficit into moving a break up at 3-2.<\/p>\n
However, the nerves returned when she found herself out in front. <\/p>\n
The groundstrokes became looser as she could not consolidate, then threw in a shocking service game with two double faults for 5-3.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, also prone to shifts in her level, remained the steadier to take the lead.<\/p>\n
While the crowd continued to provide encouragement, Anisimova cut an exasperated figure as she toiled in her opening service games of the second set.<\/p>\n
The pressure told as she fell 2-1 behind, Anisimova first slamming a ball high into the air before covering her face with a towel.<\/p>\n
The atmosphere flattened among the partisan 25,000 fans, but the mood changed when Anisimova broke back to force a tie-break.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s record this year in tie-breakers has been formidable and her confidence showed as she forged a decisive lead before winning her 19th breaker in a row. <\/p>\n
“I know how hard these finals hurt,” said Sabalenka. “But you will enjoy it more after these tough losses.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anisimova has a no-frills game – all power and no subtlety, she looked to use that to blow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-124189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}