The British fifth seed, who had been scheduled to face Belgium’s Zizou Bergs in the second round, now faces another period on the sidelines after missing the recent Masters 1000 tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati as he attempted to recover from a bruised bone in his upper left arm.

The injury, which Draper attempted to play down earlier this week, leaves him unable to defend the bulk of the 800 points he earned after reaching the semi-finals last year. He is projected to drop at least two places in the rankings to seventh as a result.

“Hi guys, I’m sorry to say I’ll be withdrawing from the US Open,” Draper announced on social media. “I tried my very best to be here and give myself every chance to play, but the discomfort in my arm has become too much and I have to do what is right and look after myself. Thank you for all the support.”

The irony is that Draper had appeared to be in particularly fine fettle after emerging from a seven-week hiatus last week to compete in the re-imagined mixed doubles event alongside Jessica Pegula. Always an imposing presence at 6ft 4in, he looked noticeably more muscular, a change he attributed to tennis-specific fitness work during his injury absence rather than a dedicated effort to bulk up with bench presses and the like.

Before his return at Flushing Meadows, where his mixed doubles run with Pegula culminated with a semi-final defeat to Casper Ruud and Iga Swiatek, Draper was last seen in competitive action at Wimbledon, where he was seeded fourth but was beaten in round two by former finalist Marin CIlic. By then, he had already been suffering with pain in his humerus, the bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow, for several weeks.

“It was something I was playing through for a while,” Draper said after his win over Gomez on Monday. “I first started feeling it probably towards the middle of the clay season. I felt like my arm was shutting down a little bit when I was hitting forehands and on the serve. It kind of got progressively worse. Then, on the grass, it got quite painful. So I didn’t know what I was dealing with. 

“After the grass, I got it checked out. I had some bone stress, bone bruising, in my humerus on my left side. It is one of those where, if you keep playing with it, it could become very, very serious. So I had to take some time out. Saying that, it was not so bad, because I could obviously do a lot of other things as well physically. It wasn’t like I had to stop completely.” 

That situation has now changed, with a longer layoff seemingly required to solve the issue. Draper, who practised at Flushing Meadows on Tuesday and Wednesday before confirming his withdrawal, had been seeded to meet Jannik Sinner, the Italian world No 1, in the quarter-finals.

The post Jack Draper withdraws from US Open with arm injury appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Following the rapid turnaround that saw her hotfoot it from the Cincinnati Open to New York, where she began her mixed doubles campaign alongside Casper Ruud this time last week only hours after defeating Jasmine Paolini in the Cincinnati Open final, the Polish world No 2 finally got her singles campaign underway at Flushing Meadows.

This year’s Sunday start means the season’s final major is already well underway and, having entered the fray belatedly, Swiatek had the air of a woman eager to make up for lost time. She dispatched Emiliana Arango of Colombia 6-1, 6-2 in exactly an hour, delivering a performance as dominant as the scoreline would suggest to secure a second-round meeting with Suzan Lamens of the Netherlands.

If it was quick, Swiatek would not have it any other way. The concrete cacophony that is New York will never be the most natural habit for a woman who once wrote a column about her rise entitled: “The story of a Polish introvert”, although you would hardly have guessed it from the commanding nature of a display in which she fired 26 winners and did not face a single break point. Despite the summary nature of the win, Swiatek is evidently in no hurry to leave the city just yet.

Indeed, it was all very much business as usual for the Pole, who has now won 65 straight opening-round matches at tour level to eclipse the open-era record previously held by Monica Seles. That run includes 24 in a row at the majors, matching the mark achieved by her compatriot Agnieszka Radwanska – the most recent player to achieve such early-round consistency – between 2009 and 2015.

Those numbers will mean little to Swiatek; not when she has her sights set on the larger prize of a second US Open title to go with her 2022 victory. Yet they underline the wider sense of resurgence surrounding the 24-year-old after her unexpected run to the Wimbledon crown this summer. Gone is the player who endured a 13-month trophy drought, replaced by the serial winner of old – one who knows how to navigate the unique challenges of a city that reputedly never sleeps. 

“In 2022, it’s not like I played amazing from the beginning,” said Swiatek. “It was probably the toughest slam [in which] I had to overcome a lot of challenges and I managed to win it. Every year is kind of tough, you know, because New York is just so loud and it’s hard to find that balance off the court.

“I’ve got to say I’m probably good at it compared to other players, so I’m really trying to be in my bubble. The comfort level is hard to describe, because the tournament is so long, you’re basically here for three weeks, so obviously it’s not going to be the same every day. 

“But I feel pretty happy with my performance in Cincinnati, I’m trying to get some confidence from that. There are a lot of positive vibes in the team.”

So there should be. Opening rounds can be a tricky business, as Renata Zarazúa demonstrated when she dealt Madison Keys, the reigning Australian Open champion and a former US Open finalist, a 6-7 (10-12), 7-6 (7-3), 7-5 defeat on Monday. 

Keys, the sixth seed, led by a set and 3-0 but was undone by a whopping 89 unforced errors as the Mexican world No 82, who had never previously beaten a top-10 opponent, claimed the biggest win of her career.       

“I feel like today, for the first time in a while, my nerves really got the better of me, and it kind of became a little bit paralysing,” said Keys. “I want to win, but just feeling like winning matters just way too much, and I just couldn’t quite separate myself from that. Once you start playing badly, it just kind of all snowballs.”

The shock result offered another reminder that the kind of early-round consistency Swiatek has made her trademark can never be taken for granted. Not that the six-time grand slam champion is about to get carried away.   

“I’m happy that I had some time to just get used to the conditions and the surface, because for sure it’s different than the practice courts,” she said. “I think it was just a solid match, and I’m happy that I can play another round here.

The post Iga Swiatek hits the ground running at the US Open appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Five weeks after their monumental duel at Roland Garros, expectations were understandably high at the prospect of the pair going at it again with the Wimbledon title on the line. But Paris, where Alcaraz fought back from a two-set deficit, saving three championship points to prevail after five hours and 29 minutes of extraordinary theatre, was inevitably a difficult act to follow.  

The encore was a relatively anticlimactic affair, high in quality but largely devoid of the tension and uncertainty that characterised the first instalment. If the French Open final was a wild rollercoaster ride, the follow-up in SW19 had a more Aristotelian quality, drama giving way to catharsis as Sinner exorcised memories of his ordeal on the Parisian clay with a clinical 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 victory. 

In securing his fourth grand slam title, and first away from the hard courts of Melbourne Park and Flushing Meadows, the 23-year-old ended a run of five straight defeats to Alcaraz and became the first Italian to lift a Wimbledon singles trophy. For a player who returned from a 12-week drugs suspension in early May after testing positive for a banned anabolic steroid that purportedly entered his system through a massage, it represents a remarkable turnaround.

“Very emotional, no, even if I don’t cry,” said Sinner, reflecting on the moments following victory, when he crouched low on the Centre Court grass, his head bowed as he tried to process the enormity of it all. “It feels emotional because only me and the people who are close to me know exactly what we have been through on and off the court, and it has been everything except easy. 

“We’ve tried to push, you know, every practice session, even [though] I was struggling at times mentally. Maybe even more in practice sessions, because I feel like when I play the match, I can switch off and just play. I believe that this helped me a lot. 

“To share this moment with my family here, my whole family here, it’s the most amazing thing that could have happened to me.”

It was nonetheless a curious match, entertaining yet strangely dissatisfying, the whole somehow less than the immaculately crafted parts. That owed much to the essentially linear nature of the contest, which was controlled by Sinner aside from an electric four-game passage in which Alcaraz rebounded from 4-2 down to win the opening set. If the momentum shifts of their French Open meeting were plotted on a graph, the pattern would have formed a zigzag, gentle at first and then ever more frenetic; here, the Italian’s first-set early blip aside, things proceeded more or less in a straight line. 

That is not to deny the excellence of the ball-striking from both men, or the mental steel Sinner exhibited in wresting back control after falling behind. But for once, Alcaraz failed to keep his end of the deal, failed to find that signature spark of inspiration; for once, he waved the wand only to find the magic wanting. He entered the stage as a two-time defending champion on a 24-match winning streak, but left it with his recent aura of invincibility punctured, if not his smile. 

It was a reminder that Alcaraz, who had won each of his five previous grand slam finals, is fallible after all. That he is not just a walking highlight reel. There are moments when the things he does on a tennis court appear almost otherworldly, yet rarely has he seemed more human than when he looked forlornly towards his box after being broken late in the third set, yelling in his native tongue: “He is playing much better than me.” 

“At some points I didn’t know what I had to do in the match, because from the baseline I was feeling he was better than me, and I couldn’t do anything about it,” Alcaraz later explained. “I think the big key was about the second serve. He was returning really well the second serve that I was hitting. 

“Thanks to that, he was in the position to attack the second ball every time. It is really difficult when you are feeling that you are just defending all the time and running from side to side.”

Alcaraz is still Alcaraz and inevitably, over the course of three hours and four minutes, he showed flashes of brilliance, not least in the latter stages of the first set. In the eighth game, he laid the foundations for a break with a combination of finesse and firepower, following up a gorgeous angled drop volley with a brutal baseline barrage, and he later showcased his peerless defensive skills to telling effect, converting his second set point with a brilliant, lunging backhand winner.

More often, though, the key moments belonged to Sinner. Serving to level the contest at a set apiece, the Italian bludgeoned a forehand down the line to bring up two set points before producing a sumptuous cross-court forehand on the dead run. Later, having engineered a break with a pair of brilliant returns that he backed up with approach shots of devastating accuracy and power, he served out the third set with dead-eyed ruthlessness. 

And at the death, when Sinner found himself two sets to love up and 5-3 ahead in the fourth, a lead identical to the one he had held in Paris, he refused to buckle, refused to listen to his inner demons or countenance the notion that history might repeat itself. Not even when Alcaraz, fighting to cling on to his title, served himself out of a hole at 15-30, a success he greeted with a gladiatorial roar towards his box. 

Instead, with the championship in his crosshairs, Sinner was hard as nails, his focus unwavering as he carved out a 40-0 lead before sending down one last service winner to convert his second match point and seal a first win over Alcaraz since his title run at the 2023 China Open. It was the work of a man with a granite mentality.

“Today’s match I think was a match of moments, of just who was going to step up in the big moment and make something happen,” said Darren Cahill, who coaches Sinner alongside Simone Vagnozzi. “At Roland Garros it was Carlos, and today it was Jannik.

“He came here and played with a real purpose. I think you could see from the first match he played that he wasn’t carrying any baggage from Roland Garros. That’s not easy to do. It’s easy for us to say that in words, to put it to one side. But for the player to wipe it away and be able to come here with the mentality that he had, is 100% credit to him.”

Grand slam titles are rarely won without fortune smiling favourably somewhere along the way, and for Sinner that moment came in the fourth round when Grigor Dimitrov, leading by two sets to love, was forced to retire with a pectoral injury. The Italian suffered an injury scare of his own in that match, jarring his right elbow in an early fall, and he wore a protective sleeve on his arm for the remainder of the tournament. But Sinner has become inured to adversity in recent times. 

“I had a tough loss in Paris,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter how you win or you lose. You just have to understand what you did wrong and you have to accept the loss and keep working. This is why I hold this trophy here.”

The post Sinner defeats Alcaraz to win first Wimbledon title appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

Iga Swiatek, a four-time French Open champion who has long regarded the lawns of the All England Club with deep suspicion, staged a Centre Court masterclass on Saturday to win the most one-sided Wimbledon final in more than a century.

The Polish eighth seed demolished Amanda Anisimova of the United States 6-0, 6-0 to win her first Wimbledon title, delivering a performance of such devastating authority and intensity that the whole thing was over in just 57 minutes.

Rarely has the long-running joke about Iga’s bakery – an allusion to the 24-year-old’s signature habit of doling out 6-0 and 6-1 sets, known in tennis parlance as bagels and breadsticks – felt more relevant, or more wildly inappropriate. For while the afternoon was first and foremost about the excellence of Swiatek, another abiding memory will be Anisimova’s tearful anguish at her inability to touch the heights she reached against Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals. 

Instead, the final act of the 23-year-old Floridian’s tournament was a mirror image of the first, Anisimova forced to taste the same bitter draught she had served Yulia Putintseva in a 6-0, 6-0 opening-round win. 

Anisimova was overwhelmed long before Swiatek drilled a final backhand beyond her to confirm a sixth grand slam title. She struggled to compose herself at the final changeover, and in the aftermath of defeat there were distant echoes of the late Jana Novotna’s tears after the 1993 final. Like the Duchess of Kent before her, the Princess of Wales offered words of consolation, telling her to keep her head high.

So she should, for Anisimova has been through much to reach this point. Her father Konstantin died suddenly before her 18th birthday in 2019, and two years ago she took a prolonged break from the game to look after her mental health. Anisimova broke down repeatedly as she looked up to her courtside box to thank her mother Olga – “the most selfless person I know” – for her support down the years. She lost the match, but will have won plenty of admirers. 

Ultimately, though, it was a day when Swiatek etched another indelible impression in the history books. She becomes the first Polish player to win a Wimbledon singles title, and the first to win a grand slam final without conceding a game since Steffi Graf eviscerated Natasha Zvereva at Roland Garros in 1988.

The last woman to claim a Centre Court whitewash in the final was Dorothea Lambert Chambers, who defeated fellow Briton Dora Boothby to win the fifth of her seven Wimbledon titles in 1911, while no player has dropped fewer than Swiatek’s 35 games en route to the title since Martina Navratilova in 1990. She is once again rubbing shoulders with giants.

The Pole’s achievement was all the more astonishing given that she had never previously advanced beyond the quarter-finals at the All England Club, and had not won a tournament since last summer’s French Open.    

“Who would have expected that?” mused Swiatek after joining Margaret Court and Monica Seles as only the third player to win each of her first six grand slam finals. 

“It’s a lot, you know, especially after a season with a lot of ups and downs and a lot of expectations from the outside that I didn’t really match. Winning Wimbledon is something that is just surreal. I feel like tennis keeps surprising me, and I keep surprising myself.”

Yet it wasn’t and wasn’t a surprise.

Notwithstanding last month’s run to the final of Bad Homburg, few would have picked out Swiatek as the winner beforehand. But she built her form steadily over the course of the fortnight, growing in stature with each round after an early wobble against Caty McNally, and carried the experience of five previous grand slam victories into the final. Her familiarity with the big occasion gave Swiatek an edge every bit as significant as her tactical nous, vastly improved serving and the peerless movement that, with the help of the experienced Belgian coach Wim Fisette, she has finally adapted to the unique demands of grass-court tennis. 

It was evident from the outset that Anisimova was a shadow of the devastating force that had toppled Sabalenka two days earlier. Faced by the might of the Belarusian world No 1’s huge serves and heavy groundstrokes, she had fought fire with fire; paralysed by nerves and still feeling the effects of that draining semi-final battle, she was barely able to muster a spark against Swiatek. 

Anisimova is blessed with one of the finest backhands in the women’s game, yet she began by ballooning a double-hander beyond the baseline and went on to miss a trio of forehands in the face of her opponent’s bold, aggressive returning. With two minutes gone, the tone was set.

Equipped with that early break and peerless when it comes to stretching a lead, Swiatek capitalised on a flurry of backhand errors from Anisimova to consolidate her advantage, before a double fault cost the American a second break. In short space, she would become the first player to concede the first set of a women’s final without winning a game since 1983, when Martina Navratilova swept through the opener against Andrea Jaeger in equally magisterial fashion.

It was a case of double jeopardy for Anisimova. On the one hand, she had to deal with her own malfunctioning service: she landed just 45% of her first serves, winning barely a quarter of those points, and fared little behind her second delivery, with a 34% success rate. On the other, she faced an opponent who was not only dominant on serve but also constantly dragging her into the corners, forcing her off balance and denying her time to land the kind of heavy baseline blows that had done for Sabalenka. 

“She came out playing very, very well, so all credit to her,” said Anisimova. “She was able to really play the game she wanted.”

The same could not be said of the misfiring American, who desperately needed to establish a foothold in the contest at the start of the second set but, repeatedly dragged deep into her forehand corner, instead committed another spate of forced and unforced errors. There would be no way back. Anisimova acknowledged she had been “a bit frozen with nerves”, but identified weariness as the greater obstacle.  

“I was nervous, but it wasn’t anything out of this world,” she said. “If anything, I was more excited to go out there and compete. I think I was just really fatigued. I could feel it also in my warm-up this morning. I had to take a break after every single rally out there in my warm-up… To be able to last two weeks in a grand slam is definitely something that you need to work a lot on.”

It is a discipline long since mastered by Swiatek. After a chequered season by her own exalted standards – however absurd such a statement might seem, given her semi-final finishes at the Australian and French Opens and at big events in Qatar, Indian Wells and Madrid – the Pole has largely flown under the radar at the All England Club. For a player who arrived at the previous three editions of the tournament as the freshly crowned Roland Garros champion, world No 1 and top seed, it has been an unaccustomed luxury – although she was not about to start ranking her grand slam achievements. 

“I think the fact it’s on grass, for sure it makes it more special and more unexpected, so for sure it feels like the emotions are bigger,” Swiatek admitted. “At Roland Garros, I know I can play well and I know I can show it every year. 

“Here, I wasn’t sure of that and I had to prove it to myself. For sure I’m not going to rank [my grand slam wins], because I have so much respect for the other tournaments. I worked really hard to win all the other slams, so there’s no point in choosing between them. 

“But this one and the US Open [in 2022] for sure feel better, because no one expected that. It wasn’t a relief, it was more just good tennis and working to make it happen.”  

Like the quality of her tennis, Swiatek’s work ethic has never been in doubt. But her Wimbledon triumph was also underpinned by hitherto largely unseen qualities: versatility, adaptability, a newfound willingness to slice and block. Patience allied with timely aggression; instinct and improvisation combined with the technical and tactical preparation on which she habitually thrives. Fun, even, for she was never a mere dirtballer or “robot”, as some have uncharitably labelled her. 

“Today I just wanted to enjoy the time that I had on Centre Court and enjoy the last hours of me playing well on grass, because who knows if it’s going to happen again,” said Swiatek. “I just focused on that and I really had fun.”

Swiatek served a one-month ban late last year after unwittingly consuming a contaminated dose of melatonin, costing her the chance to defend points in Japan and China and the loss of the No 1 ranking. The International Tennis Integrity Agency deemed her transgression to be at the lowest end of the range for “no significant fault or negligence”, but Swiatek was deeply affected by the episode and that has, perhaps, been reflected in her tennis. 

Now the smile has returned to her face. She greeted victory with unconfined joy, falling on her back in disbelief before gambolling across Centre Court, and she celebrated exuberantly on retreating to the clubhouse balcony with the Venus Rosewater dish. Above all, her game is once more evolving. There will surely be more afternoons like this.

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Alcaraz has enjoyed a triumphant start to the summer, retaining his French Open title with an epic five-set win over Jannik Sinner before transitioning smoothly from Parisian clay to English grass to claim a second victory in three years at Queen’s Club. But a first-round meeting with Fabio Fognini was never likely to be a straightforward assignment, even allowing for the fact that the gifted Italian arrived at Wimbledon without a main-draw win at tour level this season, and Alcaraz was aware from the outset that it could be a challenging afternoon.

“I knew at the beginning it was going to be very difficult playing against Fabio,” said Alcaraz after claiming a 7-5, 6-7 (5-7), 7-5, 2-6, 6-1 victory in blistering heat. “It doesn’t matter, his last year, his last tournaments, the talent that Fabio has is immense. In every match he can show his best tennis.” 

For four hours and 37 minutes, Fognini did just that, delving deep into the box of tricks that once earned him a place in the world’s top 10. He ran, he hustled, he harried. He flicked forehands to every corner of the court, often at full stretch and always with no discernible sign of effort. He knifed backhands loaded with slice and sidespin to Alcaraz’s forehand, forcing the Spaniard to pick the ball off his shoelaces. At one point he even turned southpaw, almost catching the champion off guard with a lunging left-handed forehand. 

Fognini is 38 now and he has indicated this will be his final season on tour. Wimbledon has never been the happiest of hunting grounds – this was his 15th visit and he has never been beyond round three – but what a swansong it was. So good, in fact, that the Italian said afterwards it might even have been the last match of his career. If so, he went out on a high.

That Alcaraz emerged unscathed was down to a combination of resilience, rapidly accumulated experience, and the sheer breadth of his options. He struggled with his serve, particularly early on, and made a whopping 62 unforced errors. But there are so many weapons in the Spaniard’s arsenal that even when one element of his game is misfiring – and at one point or another he stuttered in just about every area against Fognini – there is always something else to fall back on. Not least the extraordinary tenacity that also got him over the line against Sinner at Roland Garros earlier this month.

“I’m getting mature and I know how to deal with some situations,” said Alcaraz, who has been beaten just once in the 15 five-set matches he has contested so far in his career. “I always say that the champions always find a way. I really want to see myself in that [list] of champions. I really want to put myself like a champion that always finds a way to win. 

“I’ve been playing really, really tough matches the last year, the last year in this tournament. Just really proud that I always find a way. Today I did it, even though Fabio was playing great tennis. Just really proud to overcome the problem, to overcome the tough moments.”

Alcaraz’s epic win puts him in distinguished company. Roger Federer memorably fought back from two sets to love down against Alejandro Falla in 2010, while Pete Sampras held firm in the fifth set against Britain’s Barry Cowan in 2001. Going further back, Bjorn Borg pulled off several Houdini-like acts of escapology during his run of five straight titles, overcoming a two-set deficit against Mark Edmondson in 1977, recovering from two sets to one down against Victor Amaya the following year, and overturning a similar deficit against Vijay Amritraj in 1979. 

Even after winning two titles in SW19, Alcaraz has a way to go before matching that trio – between them, Federer, Sampras and Borg were crowned champions on no fewer than 19 occasions – but this will nonetheless go down as a worthy addition to the catalogue of great escapes. Amid all his achievements – five majors, seven Masters 1000 titles, youngest world No 1 in rankings history, the list goes on – it is easy to forget that the Spaniard is still a relative newcomer to the tournament. This year marks his fifth visit, and against Fognini he was opening the Centre Court programme as defending champion for only the second time. Understandably, there were nerves.

“It feels like it was the first time,” said Alcaraz, who has now won his past 19 matches. “It doesn’t matter, the winning streak that I have right now, that I’ve been playing great on grass, that I have been preparing really well the week before. Wimbledon is different. 

“I could feel today that I was really nervous at the beginning. Being the first match on Centre Court, it’s a huge privilege for me. Even though I played the first match last year, it feels [like] the first time. I just try to deal with the nerves the best way possible.”

Alcaraz can draw comfort from the knowledge that he is not alone. In weathering an early storm on the Centre Court grass, he has trodden a path familiar to many a past champion; few would be surprised if it led him to a third title.

The post How Alcaraz came of age in Wimbledon win over Fognini appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

“Knowing that there is someone chasing me or I have a target on my back right now, I love it,” she said in Paris a few weeks ago. “I take it as a challenge. Every time I go out there, I feel like, OK, let’s go. Let’s see who is ready for the pressure moments.”

Such self-belief has been evident throughout Sabalenka’s reign at the top of the rankings. Since reclaiming top spot from Iga Swiatek last October, following an eight-week run at No 1 in late 2023, the 27-year-old has been a model of consistency, winning WTA 1000 titles in Miami and Madrid and reaching the finals of the Australian Open, Indian Wells, Stuttgart and Roland Garros. 

In the process, she has made a mockery of the notion that it is harder to hang on to top spot than to reach it. As Swiatek has struggled to hit the high notes with the regularity that kept her at No 1 for 125 weeks, Sabalenka has cemented her status. She goes into Wimbledon almost 4,000 ahead of second-placed Coco Gauff and, having reached the semi-finals in her past two appearances at the All England Club, a firm title favourite in the eyes of the oddsmakers.

But while Sabalenka’s setbacks have been few, they have been significant. Defeat to Madison Keys in Melbourne denied her a third straight Australian Open title, while an error-strewn loss to Gauff in Paris earlier this month leaves her still searching for a first grand slam title on a surface other than hard courts. 

Events in the French capital also laid bare the mental fault-lines in Sabalenka’s game. She has made good the damage caused by her ungracious remarks in the aftermath of that match, when she blamed defeat on the windy conditions, her own poor play and Gauff’s mishits, but the emotional volatility that sparked that outburst, a quality she has worked so hard to tame, cannot be solved simply with contrite remarks and social media snippets.     

“Usually after losing, I’m quite good,” said Sabalenka, who has apologised to Gauff publicly and privately, and last week performed a TikTok routine with the American after practising with her on Centre Court, apparently confirming the hatchet has been buried between the pair.

”I can accept losing, of course. I usually never struggle. It’s just this time it was super tough for me, I don’t know why. I wanted it badly and I just was upset that I couldn’t make it. This time, emotions took over me. 

“But on court, in the finals or semi-finals sometimes, I can get over-emotional and I would like to improve that, I would like to stay to the same mentality I have during the tournament. 

“I believe I get over-emotional at the last stages of the tournaments because I have this desire of winning. Sometimes it gets over me and I can lose control over my emotions. I would love to control that at the last stages of the tournament.”

It is a rare chink in the armour of a player whose withering power and growing variety seem tailor-made for Wimbledon, and it points to a deeper challenge for the Belarusian. For all Sabalenka’s insistence that she is comfortable with the external pressures that go with the No 1 ranking, the tiger within has been harder to tame. 

The weight of that burden was evident in her nervous start to the Australian Open final, and it surfaced again in Paris, where she became increasingly frustrated by her inability to capitalise on a blistering start. At a point in her career where even her closest rivals often struggle to touch her, Sabalenka may just be her own worst enemy.

The irony is glaringly apparent – even to the Belarusian, who has acknowledged the disparity between her on- and off-court persona. Always a bubbly presence when not in the heat of battle, Sabalenka arrived in SW19 fresh from a surprise defeat to former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova in Berlin, but with a broad smile on her face. 

She has had plenty of fun since, including practices with Jannik Sinner, her male counterpart at the top of the rankings, and seven-time champion Novak Djokovic, who spent more than half an hour afterwards in deep conversation with her.

There was further merriment when Djokovic gatecrashed the final moments of Sabalenka’s  pre-tournament press conference.

“What do you think about hitting with me, how do you see my level?” she enquired jokingly.

“I think you have the potential, you’re a really talented player, you have nice strokes, good technique,” Djokovic replied without missing a beat. “Can I be honest? You’re lacking intensity on the court, you don’t have enough intensity. It’s too flat.”

The Serb’s irony occasioned much laughter, yet there was also truth in his jest. For all the comic mileage to be found in casting the impassioned Sabalenka as too laid back, there is a point at which  desire suffocates, where intensity spills over into something more destructive. Sabalenka has identified the problem; her ability to find a solution is likely to shape the outcome of her challenge for a first Wimbledon title.

The post Sabalenka: why Wimbledon’s apex predator is out to tame herself appeared first on Love Game Tennis.

In a match-up that drew a ripple of mischievous amusement as it was announced at the conclusion of Friday morning’s draw, Alcaraz will begin his quest for a third successive crown against Fabio Fognini, the gifted but unpredictable Italian whose languid shot-making belies a notoriously fiery disposition.

Fognini has hinted that this is likely to be his final year on the tour and, while it would be stretching it to suggest an upset could be on the cards, the 38-year-old will undoubtedly relish the prospect of facing a big name on Centre Court in what may be his last match at Wimbledon. The pair have met twice previously, both times on red clay in Rio de Janeiro, with Alcaraz winning on each occasion. 

The Spanish second seed is projected to face Holger Rune of Denmark in the quarter-finals, with either Alexander Zverev, the German world No 3, or Taylor Fritz, the fifth seed, barring his path to another final. 

Krejcikova, meanwhile, was drawn against Alexandra Eala of the Philippines, the 20-year-old left-hander whose breakout run to the semi-finals of the Miami Open earlier this year included victories over Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys and Iga Swiatek. The 74th-ranked Eala, who has made encouraging progress on grass ahead of her main draw debut at Wimbledon, will cross swords with Australian teenager Maya Joint for the Eastbourne Open title on Saturday.

It represents a tough start for Krejcikova, who has barely played since the turn of the year due to a back injury and withdrew from her scheduled Eastbourne quarter-final against Varvara Gracheva this week with a thigh problem, raising further doubts about her fitness. The 29-year-old Czech, currently ranked 17th, defeated Jasmine Paolini in last year’s Wimbledon final to claim her second grand slam title following her French Open victory of four years ago. 

Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 1, will open her challenge against Carson Branstine, a 24-year-old Canadian qualifier. The 27-year-old Belarusian could meet former champion Marketa Vondrousova, who defeated her in straights sets in the semi-finals of the Berlin Open last weekend, in round three. Sabalenka is projected to face Madison Keys, the Australian Open champion, in the last eight, with either Paolini or Qinwen Zheng, the Olympic champion and fifth seed, potentially awaiting in the semi-finals.

In the lower half of the draw, second seed Coco Gauff will begin her campaign against the 42nd-ranked Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine and could play former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka in round two. 

Gauff, 21, is expected to face Swiatek in the last eight – although the Pole, who opens against Polina Kudermetova, may first have to get past either Danielle Collins or Marta Kostyuk in the third round, followed by Elena Rybakina, the 2022 champion. The American, who won her second major title at the French Open earlier this month, is seeded to meet fellow countrywoman Jessica Pegula, who starts against Elisabetta Cocciaretto of Italy, in the last four.

Elsewhere in the men’s draw, top seed Jannik Sinner opens against Luca Nardi and is expected to meet another Italian opponent, Lorenzo Musetti, in the last eight. Sinner could then be in line for a reunion with Novak Djokovic, who defeated him in the semi-finals two years ago. First, though, Djokovic may need to see off Britain’s Jack Draper, the fourth seed, who gave the seven-time champion an opening-round scare on his main draw debut in 2021. 

With his thunderous southpaw serve and heavy forehand, Draper would seem to have a game ideally suited to grass. But the 23-year-old, who will be carrying the hopes of the home nation despite never previously going beyond round two in three visits to SW19, has been handed an onerous draw. Following an opening-round assignment against Sebastián Báez, the world No 38, Draper could meet former finalist Marin Cilic, followed by Alexander Bublik – who defeated him at the French Open earlier this month and won the Halle Open on grass last weekend – and the rising Czech teenager Jakub Mensik.

Emma Raducanu, who aggravated a lingering back injury during her recent quarter-final run at Queen’s Club, has been handed a similarly difficult path. The former US Open champion, who reached the fourth for the second time last year, begins against 17-year-old wildcard Mimi Xu, a former British national junior champion. Assuming she survives unscathed, Raducanu will face either the resurgent Vondrousova, who won the Berlin Open title last week, or the American 32nd seed McCartney Kessler – followed, in all likelihood, by Sabalenka.

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The nugget of wisdom bequeathed to Carlos Alcaraz by his grandfather, and tattooed in shorthand on his left wrist, has never felt more pertinent than it did on Sunday at Roland Garros, where the 22-year-old Spaniard saved three championship points against Jannik Sinner, the Italian world No 1, to win the longest French Open final in history.

Having divided the past six majors equally between them, the pair have already inherited the mantle of the Big Three. But their epic first meeting in a grand slam final brought vibrant confirmation that tennis has a life beyond Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, with Alcaraz recovering from two sets to love down for the first time in his career to prevail in a fifth-set tiebreak after five hours and 29 minutes of pure theatre. 

In staving off three match points, Alcaraz achieved a feat not seen in the men’s game since 1927, when Henri Cochet came within a point of defeat on six occasions before finally prevailing against fellow “French musketeer” Jean Borotra in five sets. 

That statistic alone is indicative of the historic nature of what was undoubtedly the greatest comeback in a grand slam final since the open era began in 1968. Djokovic saved two match points to deny Federer a 21st major at Wimbledon in 2019, but the most obvious point of comparison came in 2004, when Gastón Gaudio prevailed in an all-Argentine Roland Garros final, likewise saving a pair of championship points after dropping the first two sets against Guillermo Coria. 

That, though, was a nervous, cramp-ridden affair; this was tennis of an entirely different order. In the first French Open final to be decided by a final-set tiebreak, Alcaraz initially found Sinner every bit as impenetrable as the Italian’s previous 20 grand slam opponents. Yet the Spaniard somehow summoned the will and the level to force a decider in which Sinner displayed extraordinary reserves of physical and mental fortitude, defying cramp and then defying Alcaraz, who served for the title at 5-4, to take the contest down to the wire. 

Only at the death was Alcaraz finally able to pull clear, the defending champion riding the momentum from a jaw-dropping backhand pass in his final service game to produce a near-flawless exhibition of shot-making in the climactic tiebreak. A brilliant running forehand sealed a victory for the ages, 4-6, 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-3), 7-6 (10-2), and sent rapturous observers scurrying for superlatives, with some even comparing the match to the 1980 and 2008 Wimbledon finals between, respectively, Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe and Nadal-Federer.

“If people put our match in that table, it’s a huge honour for me,” said Alcaraz after sealing his fifth grand slam title. “I don’t know if it is at the same level as those matches because those matches are, you know, the history of tennis and the history of the sport. So I let people talk about it, if for them [the matches] are almost the same. 

“But for me, watching from outside or realising what that match is in the history of tennis, I don’t know if our match is in the same table as them. But [I’m] just happy to put our match and our names in the history of the grand slams, in the history of Roland Garros. I [leave] the discussion to the people.”

So what of that discussion? The drama of the denouement was undeniable, and both men produced some majestic tennis. For two sets, Sinner was almost unplayable; by the end, it was Alcaraz who was untouchable. Yet it should also be acknowledged that, until the latter stages, they rarely played their best tennis at the same time. As Sinner marched into a seemingly unassailable lead, suffocating Alcaraz with the quality of his serving and deep, central returns, which denied the Spaniard the angles on which he thrives, the heightened sense of anticipation surrounding the contest dwindled. 

Put it this way: had Sinner gone on to seal the title in four sets, the match would never have been mentioned in the same breath as Borg-McEnroe 1980 or Federer-Nadal 2008, both of which featured genre-defining fourth-set tiebreaks in which match points were saved and individual points forever seared in the memory. The equivalent shootout here was relatively devoid of jeopardy, two of Sinner’s three points coming early, and from unforced errors. 

Instead, the pivotal moments came when Sinner made three straight errors with Alcaraz serving at 3-5, 0-40. Duly emboldened, the Spaniard slammed down an ace, smoked a forehand down the line, and cupped a hand to his ear, drinking in the acclaim of a crowd desperate to see more. Alcaraz duly obliged, breaking with some scintillating all-court play, and from that moment on the fascination became whether he could finish what he had started, staging a repeat of his comeback from a similarly parlous position against Sinner at the 2022 US Open.

So while the score might have evoked memories of those classic Wimbledon finals, the context was as different as the surface and the protagonists; a new match, for a new generation. And perhaps that is as it should be: not every chapter in the sport’s evolution has to echo the previous one, as Sinner pointed out.

“I think every rivalry is different, no?” Sinner said of the contest’s place in the pantheon. “Back in the days, they played a little bit different tennis. Now, you know, the ball is going fast. It’s very physical. It’s slightly different from my point of view, you cannot compare.”

Everyone will have their own opinion, of course, and many of the sport’s luminaries were in no doubt about what they were seeing. 

“They’re playing at a pace that’s not human,” enthused TV pundit and three-time French Open champion Mats Wilander. “Insane level,” Stan Wawrinka declared on social media. McEnroe even suggested both men would have been favourites against peak Nadal – proof, if nothing else, that the American analyst’s aptitude for going too far burns as bright as it did in his playing days. But Alcaraz probably had it about right when he remarked that, good as the match was, he’d seen better.

“To say it was one of the greatest finals in the history of the grand slams, it’s really high status,” he told TNT Sports. “I have to say that there have been better finals. I’m going to say one: Novak [Djokovic] against Rafa [Nadal], the final of the Australian Open [in 2012]. That level of final is pretty high. In history, there have been better finals I guess. But I’m just really happy to put my name into one of the best finals, the longest finals, here in Roland Garros.”  

Few could have guessed what was coming in the early stages. While Sinner was clinical, Alcaraz seemed to be all out of the stardust he normally sprinkles on these occasions. Even when he won the third set it felt more like a gesture of defiance, a minor skirmish won, than the start of a more wholesale turnaround. 

While Alcaraz’s spirit was admirable, it was still difficult to imagine Sinner letting the match slip. The Italian’s serve dipped markedly in that middle set – he won just 44% of points behind his first delivery, compared with 70% for the match as a whole – and the likelihood remained that he would find a solution.

True, the flashes of brilliance from Alcaraz’s racket were becoming more frequent. But the defending champion was still overpressing, trying to force the play rather than construct points with an endgame in mind. A case in point came at the start of the third, when a searing crosscourt forehand fell narrowly wide, costing him a break. Alcaraz gestured frustratedly to his box, evidently mystified by the imprecision of his baseline bombs. 

By the latter stages of the decider, however, the Spaniard was beginning to hit his targets with ominous frequency. There was a setback when he failed to serve out the match at 5-4, but that was mainly because Sinner threw the kitchen sink at him.

The Italian had never previously won a match spanning more than three hours and 50 minutes. Yet, despite showing signs of cramp early in the set, he came within two points of doing so with Alcaraz serving at 5-6, 15-30. It was an incredible effort, given this was just his second tournament after a three-month drug ban, but Alcaraz remained immovable.

Only Borg and Nadal have won five grand slam titles at a younger age, a timeline all the more remarkable for the fact that he reached that milestone at 22 years, one month and three days – exactly the same age Nadal was when he achieved the same feat. 

“I have to realise that I’ve done it, I think that’s the first step,” Alcaraz said of that unlikely conjunction. “The coincidence of winning my fifth grand slam at the same age as Rafa Nadal, I’m going to say that’s destiny, I guess. 

“It is a stat that I’m going to keep for me forever, winning the fifth grand slam at the same time as Rafa, my idol, my inspiration. It’s a huge honour, honestly. You know, hopefully it’s not going to stop like this.”

After the greatest comeback in living memory, that seems unlikely. Alcaraz showed the mental strength to keep fighting when all looked lost, the spirit to work his way back into contention, and the courage to play his best tennis when the need was greatest. Head, heart, cojones: just like his grandfather always told him.

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On an afternoon when a trophy the Belarusian world No 1 coveted slipped through her fingers, it felt like a metaphor.

Two hours earlier, Coco Gauff had been little more than a bystander at her own execution. A devastating early onslaught from Sabalenka had propelled her to a 4-1, 40-0 first-set lead, and she looked poised to take a significant stride towards a career grand slam by adding a maiden Roland Garros title to her US and Australian Open victories. 

Instead, in an echo of her win over Sabalenka at Flushing Meadows in 2023, Gauff rose from the canvas to mount an improbable comeback, hustling, chasing and counterpunching her way to a 6-7 (5-7), 6-2, 6-4 triumph and a second grand slam title. At 21, she becomes only the second American woman this century to triumph in Paris, following in the footsteps of Serena Williams, who was a year younger when she won the first of her three titles in 2002.

It was not a day for the aesthetes – the conditions saw to that – and Gauff later acknowledged the utilitarian nature of her performance. But winning ugly is still winning and, for a player once coached by Brad Gilbert, who famously authored a book on that very subject, the end more than justified the means. 

While Sabalenka fretted and fussed about the wind and her own inconsistency, Gauff simply played her tennis when she could, and scrapped, scurried and made balls whenever her opponent’s sporadic periods of excellence did not allow her that luxury. It was enough. 

“I’m just really happy with the fight that I managed,” said Gauff. “Today wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done and that’s all that matters.”

Just how deeply it mattered became clear after two hours and 38 minutes, when a final Sabalenka backhand flew wide, signalling the conclusion of a scrappy, emotionally fraught contest that swung back and forth as violently as the windblown flags above Court Philippe Chatrier. Gauff fell to the court on her back, her body convulsed with emotion, her mouth agape, before rising to embrace Sabalenka. 

Making her way to the opposite end, she then sank to her knees on the clay, making a heart gesture as she looked up at her parents, Candi and Corey, before joining them in the stands. Perhaps the most touching moment came when her father, his eyes welling, tenderly wiped the clay from her clothes and face in preparation for the trophy ceremony.

There were tears too back on court, where Sabalenka cut a distraught figure as she sat in her chair trying to make sense of it all. For a fortnight, she had looked every inch the world’s best player. She cruised into the semi-finals without dropping a set, dispatching the Olympic champion Qinwen Zheng along the way, and then did what no one else has been able to do since 2021 by defeating Iga Swiatek, a four-time champion on the Parisian clay. But after her early dominance, she slowly began to implode. 

If the 70 unforced errors with which Sabalenka finished the afternoon were alarming, even more so was the manner in which she unravelled mentally in the face of an obdurate opponent and a troublesome breeze that, as Gauff later explained, was hard to hit through from one end but mae the ball fly from the other. When Sabalenka won her first major title at the Australian Open in 2023, it seemed she had finally tamed her combustible nature. But she has now lost three of the six major finals she has contested, and here she reverted to old habits, her features all too often torn with anguish as she bellowed at her team and railed against the elements. 

To her credit, she gathered herself sufficiently to make a fight of the decider, recovering from a break down to square proceedings at 3-3 and continuing to give everything even when another error-strewn service game put Gauff back in the driving seat. It made for a tense finale, but it was too little, too late. 

Sabalenka ripped an audacious forehand return winner to save a first championship point, but was taken by surprise as Gauff attempted to convert a second, the wind holding up the American’s looped forehand as it looked to be sailing long. As the ball nosedived sharply on to the baseline, Sabalenka could only prod back a weak reply; her fate was sealed. If her frustration was understandable, particularly given that Gauff had been helped on her way by a mishit forehand earlier in the same game, her reluctance to give proper credit to her opponent was less so.

“Honestly, guys, this one hurts so much, especially after such a tough two weeks, playing great tennis, and in these terrible conditions, showing such terrible tennis in the final, that really hurts,” Sabalenka said after fighting back tears.

It was an honest admission of how she felt in the moment, but also a notable departure from the usual practice of congratulating the champion and her team first. Sabalenka went on to congratulate Gauff as the better player on the day, but later doubled down on her initial analysis, placing the blame for her defeat on the wind and her own poor play. She also emphasised the American’s good fortune. 

“Conditions were terrible and she simply was better in these conditions than me,” said Sabalenka. “I think it was the worst final ever played.

“Honestly, sometimes it felt like she was hitting the ball from the frame and somehow, magically, the ball lands in the court and you’re kind of on the back foot. It felt like a joke, like someone from above was just staying there laughing and, you know, ‘Like, let’s see if you can handle this’ – and I couldn’t today.

“I think she won the match not because she played incredible, just because I made all of those mistakes.”

If it seemed a slightly churlish assessment, the 27-year-old’s portrayal of herself as her own worst enemy was accurate. It was Flushing Meadows 2023 all over again, with Sabalenka frequently on top in the baseline exchanges only to be undone by Gauff’s defensive resilience and her own inconsistency. 

The ultimate outcome was barely imaginable after the first five games. Sabalenka set the tone with an emphatic opening service game that included a second serve ace, a pair of teasing drop shots and the same irresistible combination of depth and power off the ground that had toppled Swiatek. 

But as the initial onslaught subsided and her errors became more frequent, the variety vanished from Sabalenka’s game. It flickered back to life briefly at the business end of the first set, the Belarusian reeling off four straight points from 3-5 down in the tiebreak with a blend of power and finesse. But by that point, Gauff had started to believe. Win or lose, she was ready to fight.

“After I lost the first set, I told myself, like, I’ll just give it my all and, you know, if I lose this match then at least I can say I gave it all out there, and I’ll go home and I’ll see my boyfriend,” said Gauff. “I’ve been telling myself that every day. 

“Obviously I’d love to be here and I’d love to win, but sometimes you realise, you know, if you lose, whatever – well, not whatever, I hate losing – but you know what I mean, you go home and you reset. 

“So today when I lost that first set I tried not to put too much pressure on the match and I think it worked – I was able to loosen up after that and play a little bit freer.”

As a double grand slam champion, Gauff can look to the future with a little more freedom too. From the moment she defeated Venus Williams at Wimbledon as a 15-year-old, she has lived with the pressure of suffocating expectation; six years on, she can rest secure in the knowledge that, even at this early stage in her career, that youthful promise has been fulfilled.

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But Iga Swiatek was dethroned in humbling fashion at Roland Garros on Thursday, Aryna Sabalenka ending the Polish defending champion’s remarkable 26-match winning run on the Parisian clay with a 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-0 victory as she advanced to the French Open final for the first time. 

Throughout her reign of terror in the French capital, Swiatek has often swept through sets without dropping a single game in a set – the dreaded “bagel”, as it is known in tennis parlance.

Jokes about “Iga’s Bakery” have been plentiful, but for once it was the 24-year-old who had too much on her plate, Sabalenka producing near-perfect tennis to dominate the decider so thoroughly that she dropped just six points and, remarkably, made no unforced errors.

“Six-love, what can I say?” said Sabalenka. “It couldn’t be more perfect than that.” 

Indeed not. It was a brutal exhibition of power tennis from the Belarusian world No 1, who began the afternoon in commanding vein, blasting her way into an early 4-1 lead, and ended it equally emphatically after being drawn into a more protracted battle. Through to a third straight grand slam final, a feat last achieved by Serena Williams in 2016, Sabalenka will face second seed Coco Gauff on Saturday with a fourth major title – and first away from the hard courts she favours – firmly in her sights.

“It’s going to mean everything to me and my team, because I have to say that almost my whole life, I’ve been told the clay court is not my thing, and then I didn’t have any confidence,” said Sabalenka. 

“In the past, I don’t know how many years, we’ve been able to develop my game so much, so I feel really comfortable on this surface and actually enjoy playing on clay.”

It didn’t always look like Sabalenka was having fun, particularly when she was unable to convert points for a 5-1 lead. Determined to take the contest by the scruff of the neck, she achieved that ambition early on with a combination of irresistible serving and deep, bludgeoned returns that landed at Swiatek’s feet almost before she had completed her service motion. On a drizzly day in Paris, the closed roof on Court Philippe Chatrier seemed to play into the 27-year-old’s hands, allowing her free rein to take on her shots unencumbered by the swirling wind outside.

But as Swiatek chiselled her way back into contention, moving inside the baseline, showing greater aggression on the return, and belatedly landing her first serve with greater frequency, Sabalenka made plain her frustration, muttering to herself furiously and casting dark looks towards her team. Swiatek levelled at 4-4 before a late exchange of breaks brought up a tiebreak. The Belarusian bossed the shootout, but now she knew she was in a match.

Though down a set, Swiatek could draw encouragement from the knowledge that she had navigated a similar challenge two rounds earlier against Elena Rybakina, who also set a daunting early pace and used her power to rush the defending champion into error.

It is widely acknowledged that Swiatek is never more vulnerable than when she is denied time, and in that respect Sabalenka, whose success is measured in the milliseconds it takes for her blunderbuss strokes to work their destructive magic, represents the ultimate challenge. But there is a reason Swiatek went into the contest with just two losses from 42 previous appearances at Roland Garros, and in the second set she showed her mettle.

Returning with greater depth and penetration, Swiatek secured an early break with a pair of rifled backhand winners, only to relinquish the advantage immediately with a poor service game.

But when Sabalenka replied in kind, producing an error-strewn game to concede a second break, Swiatek was not about to repeat her mistake. She instead consolidated the advantage with panache, producing a first ace of the afternoon, an exquisite piece of touch on the half-volley, and an extraordinary, lunging drop shot. In the minutes that followed, Swiatek produced her finest tennis of the fortnight and, arguably, her entire, chequered season. 

Without a title since defeating Jasmine Paolini in last year’s final, the four-time champion has slipped from first to fifth in the rankings, and will fall to seventh next week. In recent months, she has suffered losses to Jelena Ostapenko, Mirra Andreeva, Coco Gauff and Danielle Collins, respectively ending title defences in Qatar, Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome.

But as she became bolder in the baseline exchanges, producing some sharp touches at the net and improving markedly on serve – where she won 71% of points behind her first delivery, up from 43% in the first set, and more than doubled her success rate behind the second – there were glimpses of the Swiatek of old. It made Sabalenka’s superiority down the stretch all the more sobering.

“She still served really well, I feel like I served the same and she read my serve much better, so I probably won less points on the return,” said Swiatek. “I think I lost my intensity a bit and she just played pretty strong, as in the first set, but I didn’t react to that well and just couldn’t push back.

“The pace from her was super fast, she for sure, especially at the beginning of the match, played as hard as possible and pretty risky, so it was just hard to get into any rally. [In the second set] I was able to do that, so more things happened, it wasn’t just like serve and one shot, or return and one shot, I could build the rally.  

“In the third set I feel like we came back to what happened in the first, and she for sure used her chances and I didnt really keep up what I was doing in the second set.”

There were no such difficulties for Gauff, who ended the extraordinary run of French wildcard Loïs Boisson, the world No 361. The Frenchwoman, who carried the hopes of a nation after defeating three seeded players en route to the semi-finals including Jessica Pegula, the world No 3, and the sixth-ranked Mirra Andreeva, but struggled to reproduce that form as she slumped to a 6-1, 6-2 defeat. Gauff will now attempt to claim the title that eluded her three years ago, when she was routed by Swiatek in the final. 

“My first final here, I was super nervous, and I kind of wrote myself off before the match even happened,” said Gauff, 21, who defeated Sabalenka to win the 2023 US Open. “Obviously, here, I have a lot more confidence just from playing a grand slam final before and doing well in one.”

Whether that will be enough to stop Sabalenka is another matter.

“It was a big match, and it felt like a final, but I know that the job is not done yet,” said Sabalenka. “I have to go out there on Saturday, and I have to fight and I have to bring my best tennis, and I have to work for that title. 

“I’m ready; I’m ready to go out, and I’m ready to fight. And I’m ready to do everything it’s going to take to get the win.”

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