Sabalenka<\/a>, then two in the world, was reduced to tears as her serve spectacularly deserted her at a tournament in the lead-up to the 2022 Australian Open.<\/p>\n“I couldn’t put one serve in. I was double-faulting 40 times. And I was like, maybe that’s a sign that I have to quit,” she said in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
“Because I was pushing, trying. We’ve done everything to fix my serve and nothing would work.”<\/p>\n
She added: “But, you know, I really believe – because I faced in different parts of life similar things – that when you’re getting close to that moment where you’re about to give up, I really believe that this is the moment when you can turn around things.<\/p>\n
“You just have to push. You just have to keep trying. And this is the moment when it’s a turning moment.”<\/p>\n
Back in Australia a year later, Sabalenka won her first major crown and successfully defended her Melbourne title in 2024.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka is renowned for her hard-hitting, powerful serve, aggressive style of play and mental steel, but warned her rivals that she sees “so many things” that she can do better.<\/p>\n
“There’s always something, you cannot stop,” said Sabalenka, visiting Hong Kong for the Prudential NextGen Aces event with American great Andre Agassi.<\/p>\n
“Like Andre said, the moment you stop, you’re going down. And I only want to go up.”<\/p>\n
Talking specifics, she said: “I would love to approach the net much more. And I need to spend time working on that and understanding the game on the net in singles.<\/p>\n
“So, so many things I can get better at – shots, strokes, like literally everything.”<\/p>\n
‘It can destroy you’<\/p>\n
With success comes scrutiny and commentary, especially on social media, where Sabalenka frequently posts about life inside and outside tennis.<\/p>\n
She identified social media as one of the prime challenges to youngsters coming through the sport, warning that even for a seasoned campaigner like herself, it is not easy to ignore criticism and hate – “sometimes it can destroy you”.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes when it really gets to me, I like to go on their profile (the person criticising) and see that. Like guys, I’m trying to do something big here,” she said.<\/p>\n
“To inspire, to be a good example. I’m working hard. I’m chasing my dreams. I’m dedicating my life to something that I think is big.”<\/p>\n
Chats with Novak<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s friendship with 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic recently came to the fore after she practised with him and they spent time together socially along with their partners.<\/p>\n
“He’s a great guy and he’s very open. You can ask anything and he can give you advice,” she said of the 38-year-old Serb.<\/p>\n
“And he’s such an open guy and I love practising with him because for me it’s such high-intensity training.<\/p>\n
“It just helps me physically and even mentally to get better.<\/p>\n
“And then when I play against girls, I’m not getting tired physically because I practice with Novak.”<\/p>\n
She revealed that after losing two finals this year she sought his counsel.<\/p>\n
“At Wimbledon, I spoke to Novak. I just wanted to know how he was preparing himself for those big matches – what was the focus and what was his mindset going into the match.<\/p>\n
“So we talked for an hour probably, but with Novak you always can spend more than that talking and asking for advice.<\/p>\n
“And then later on, going to the US Open final, I remembered what he said, what he told me, and I think it helped me to get the title.”<\/p>\n
‘Lots to learn’<\/p>\n
Sabalenka still has years left at the top, but already has ideas of what comes after tennis.<\/p>\n
She is thinking about something related to fashion or health, but admits it is a touch daunting.<\/p>\n
“For now, I’m too busy getting better as a player, but we’re definitely going to try to come up with something cool,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But that scares me as well because I feel like as an athlete, we’re so focused on our sport and we’re just living in a bubble.<\/p>\n
“And then when we finish our career and we go outside of the bubble, it feels like for me I know nothing and I have a lot of things to learn.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka told AFP that she needs to improve her tennis “in literally everything” and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-201867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}