Sabalenka opted to take some time away from competitive action after suffering Grand Slam heartbreak at the start of the year, and that decision appears to have paid off.<\/p>\n
She has put in some dominant performances across the past two weeks and stood up to serious pressure against an opponent she tends to struggle against.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old had lost four of her previous five meetings with Rybakina in finals but dug deep to land her second trophy of the year.<\/p>\n
It is not just against Rybakina that Sabalenka has struggled, though, with six of her previous 10 finals appearances ending in defeat.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s last two appearances in finals at Indian Wells also ended in defeat – losing to Rybakina in 2023 and Mirra Andreeva last year.<\/p>\n
After losing the opening set – the first she had dropped all tournament – Sabalenka could be excused for thinking she was destined for another defeat, but the four-time Grand Slam singles champion showed incredible character to force her way back in proceedings.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka has been known for letting her frustration get in the way, but she channelled any frustrations in a positive manner to break twice in succession and save four break points before wrapping up the second set.<\/p>\n
That momentum continued into the decider and an early break appeared to be enough for Sabalenka when she had the chance to serve for the match.<\/p>\n
However, Rybakina struck back and then went on to save five break points of her own.<\/p>\n
In a match full of twists, the conclusion lived up to the billing, with Sabalenka holding firm in a superb tie-break to come out on top.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabalenka opted to take some time away from competitive action after suffering Grand Slam heartbreak at the start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-526027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}