Aryna Sabalenka\u2019s Vogue Magazine cover story here.<\/a><\/p>\nAs a 21-year-old Sabalenka was starting her rise up the rankings, her 44-year-old father died suddenly of meningitis in 2019\u2014a death the family feels was preventable and one that the two-time US Open champion said shattered her younger sister. Sabalenka said paramedics twice declined to take her father to the hospital after lowering his temperature.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, let me f\u2013king carry him to the hospital myself if the ambulance isn\u2019t taking him,\u201d said Sabalenka, who was training in Minsk during the November offseason when her dad died. \u201cThey took him on the third day, and it was too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was even harder for my mom. And I didn\u2019t realize until later how much my sister suffered. We were both daddy\u2019s little girls.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sabalenka said she draws her strength and resilience from her departed dad.<\/p>\n
\u201cTennis was fun [when I started], and I feel like it\u2019s really important for coaches to keep it fun,\u201d Sabalenka said. \u201c[My father] was always telling me, \u2018If you don\u2019t like it, if you want to quit, just tell us. You don\u2019t have to force yourself to do anything.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a period when I was probably nine when I was close to giving up. But I saw how proud my dad was of me, and I didn\u2019t want to disappoint him. And then I fell in love again with the sport, much more than before.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The four-time Grand Slam champion said winning majors is way to honor her father\u2019s memory\u2014and ensure the family name lives on.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter I lost my father, it\u2019s always been my goal to put our family name in the history of tennis,\u201d Sabalenka said.\u201d Every time I see my name on that trophy, I\u2019m so proud of myself, I\u2019m proud of my family that they never gave up on my dream and that they were doing everything they could to keep me going.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though Sabalenka has come under criticism for her sometime volatile eruptions on court, including high-decibel grunting and raging racquet destruction, she defends the fire and desire saying \u201cit\u2019s okay to go nuts\u201d and release festering frustration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was young, I would get emotional, and then I would get really pissed with myself for getting emotional,\u201d Sabalenka told Vogue. \u201cNow I understand that it\u2019s okay to throw the racket. It\u2019s okay to yell something. It\u2019s okay to go nuts if you feel like you\u2019re holding too much in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you just need to let it go, to empty it so you\u2019re ready to start over and play the match. Yeah, sometimes it looks ugly and terrible, but I need it in order to keep my head in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Sabalenka got engaged to long-time partner Georgios Frangulis, a Brazilian businessman in Indian Wells.\u00a0 The couple announced the engagement on March 3rd. Sabalenka, who sports a massive sparkling engagement ring, said she wears the ring during matches as a statement\u2014and joked it can be a weapon, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see a little bit of my father in him, and I absolutely love it,\u201d Sabalenka of Frangulis. \u201cYou know, I would tell him, \u2018I\u2019m a big girl, and my hand is big, and a small ring would look very\u2026small.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThat\u2019s the whole idea [of a large rock]\u2014especially if you\u2019re playing a night match, and the lights are hitting it. Then it\u2019s, like, right in their eyes,\u201d Sabalenka joked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Richard Pagliaro | Tuesday, May 19, 2026Photo credit: Steven Klein\/Vogue Pride and pain are emotional fuel that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-681518","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\/681518","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=681518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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