After taking a tire, the Belarusian makes an unprecedented final and looks for Belarus
Looking to cap her great season, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, second in the WTA, achieved a beautiful and impressive comeback against North American Madison Keys, 17th, and is in the grand final of the US Open, where she faces local Coco Gauff.
Playing her third consecutive semifinal at the US Open, Sabalenka had a very distracted and nervous start to the match and had to fight for 2h32 to close the score to 0/6 7/6 (7-1) 7/6 (10 -5 ) after shooting 12 aces against the 5 of Keys, who committed 32 unforced errors against the 35 of the Belarusian, who shot 39 winners against the North American’s 35.
Counting on the support of a warm and intense crowd, Keys tried to be aggressive in her return of serve and found her opponent seemingly disengaged and rather erratic. Consistently, the North American applied the rubber and opened 4/ on the board in the second phase, after exchanging breaks with Sabalenka between the 3rd and 5th games.
Next Monday, world number 1, after an early fall against Poland’s Iga Swiatek, Sabalenka served under pressure in the ninth game and saw her opponent choose her serve poorly and took the opportunity to return the break in the tenth game from scratch. The partial thus went to a tie-break, which ended up dominated by the Belarusians.
The match continued at the same pace, with the nervous players losing points in their service games and trying to put pressure on their opponent. Thus, they exchanged breaks between the 6th and 7th games and the match came to the decisive tie-break, in which Sabalenka opened 9-3 and needed three match-points to close the match.
Australian Open champion and coming off a season with semi-finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, Sabalenka is seeking an unprecedented US Open title for herself and for tennis in her country, which saw Victoria Azarenka finish in 2012 and 2013 second in the tournament only to be defeated on both occasions by American Serena Williams.
In the final, Sabalenka will face local Coco Gauff, who beat Czech Karolina Muchova.
Gauff and Sabalenka have already faced each other five times on the professional circuit and the American has a three-match win streak. Sabalenka, in turn, won in straight sets and a rubber in the last meeting between them in the group at Indian Wells this year.
Source: Terra
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