Svitolina always faced an uphill battle against Sabalenka, having lost their past five meetings.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s stats – 29 winners to 15 unforced errors and dropping just 11 points on serve – show how she dominated the play, but more impressive was her mental focus.<\/p>\n
An engaging, occasionally volatile figure on court, Sabalenka let her emotions get the better of her in both the Australian Open and French Open showpieces last year. <\/p>\n
This year, with Svitolina serving at 2-1 down in the first set, Sabalenka was called for hindrance by umpire Louise Azemar Engzell for grunting during a rally.<\/p>\n
The hindrance rule is meant to stop a player from interfering with an opponent’s ability to make a shot, either by shouting, making noise or dropping a ball from their pocket.<\/p>\n
Engzell told Sabalenka she “did not make the normal sound” when she hit the ball and subsequently awarded the point to Svitolina.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka asked for a video review but, with players unable to hear the audio, could only watch as Engzell replayed the footage and stayed with her decision.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian was unimpressed, aiming a sarcastic thumbs down at the umpire and offering a few choice words to her team, but she was able to reset quickly.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka subsequently broke Svitolina’s serve and then won four of the next five games to take the first set.<\/p>\n
After a dreadful service game handed an immediate second-set break to Svitolina, Sabalenka glared at her team, stomped to her seat and then broke back at the first opportunity.<\/p>\n
She saved another break point on her way to a 5-2 lead before fittingly closing out victory with a forehand winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Svitolina always faced an uphill battle against Sabalenka, having lost their past five meetings. Sabalenka’s stats – 29…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-270096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}