Sabalenka was the heavy favourite to beat unseeded American underdog Madison Keys and claim a third straight Melbourne title, but the instability of her second serve returned in a three-set defeat.<\/p>\n
At the French Open she played what she described as the “worst final” of her life, hitting 70 unforced errors in windy conditions.<\/p>\n
Her performance against Rybakina – who was bidding for a second major title after her 2022 Wimbledon win – was far from disastrous. <\/p>\n
In fact, there had been signs she was maintaining her composure until fifth seed Rybakina broke back in the deciding set.<\/p>\n
Out of nowhere, errors streamed from both wings as Sabalenka lost serve again for 4-3 and her focus further unravelled.<\/p>\n
At one point she dropped her racquet and kicked it across the court in frustration. <\/p>\n
Rybakina, meanwhile, remained ice-cool and served out with the aid of two aces for her second major title.<\/p>\n
Asked why she felt she lost momentum in the decider, Sabalenka said: “It was great tennis from her. Maybe not so smart for me.<\/p>\n
“Today I’m a loser, maybe tomorrow I’m a winner, maybe again a loser. Let’s see.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabalenka was the heavy favourite to beat unseeded American underdog Madison Keys and claim a third straight Melbourne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-449650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449650","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=449650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}