Clay is not Sabalenka’s strongest surface even though she has won three times in Madrid, where the high altitude makes the conditions similar to a hard court.<\/p>\n
Nor did she have a good build-up to Roland Garros. Six match points were squandered in a quarter-final defeat by Hailey Baptiste in Madrid in April, before she let a set and a break lead slip against Romanian veteran Sorana Cirstea in Rome.<\/p>\n
But, given her quality and pedigree compared to the other Paris quarter-finalists, it is hard not to think another golden opportunity has slipped through Sabalenka’s fingers.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s four Grand Slam singles titles – two Australian Open and two US Open triumphs, all on hard courts – are more than most people can dream of.<\/p>\n
But she has also lost four finals and six major semi-finals, despite a consistency on the biggest stages that is unrivalled among her peers.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka has the proud record of not losing before the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam since the start of the 2023 season.<\/p>\n
However, she has not always dealt well with the pressure of the latter stages – particularly during the period where she has clearly been the best player in the world.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka was the heavy favourite to beat underdog Madison Keys in the 2025 Australian Open final, but came unstuck. Twelve months later, she reached another Melbourne final – and a flurry of mistakes saw her squander a break lead in the deciding set against Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n
At last year’s French Open Sabalenka played what she described as the “worst final” of her life, hitting 70 unforced errors in windy conditions as she lost from a set up.<\/p>\n
Against Shnaider, Sabalenka looked in control at 6-3 4-1 up before losing 12 of the final 13 games.<\/p>\n
“I just think that there is something in specific moments during the match [where] I lose control,” said Sabalenka, whose 57 unforced errors outweighed her 46 winners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clay is not Sabalenka’s strongest surface even though she has won three times in Madrid, where the high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-713130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}