Aryna Sabalenka seems to have found her best tennis. The 22-year-old looked set to achieve great things already 2 years ago when she had a solid 2nd half of the season. In 2018, Aryna won New Haven and Wuhan. In addition, she had a good run in Cincinnati (semifinal) and the US Open (4th round). However, even if her level didn’t go down so much, she never managed to go to a different level in the following years.
Aryna had a complicated relationship with her now-former coach Dmitry Tursunov. Eventually, they parted ways and she felt a bit lost because they were working together for long. Nevertheless, after a small stint with Dieter Kindlmann, she decided to promote Anton Dubrov as her head coach right before the Roland Garros. Anton used to be Aryna’s hitting partner for long and therefore he knows her extremely well.
The results are fantastic as together they have an 11-1 win-loss record with Aryna winning her last 9 matches and two consecutive tournaments (Ostrava and Linz).
After conquering her recent title in Austria, Sabalenka commented:
“It’s important for me that I was able to have success without Dmitry [Tursunov], because we worked together for such a long time, and I started winning with him. It was tough to make the decision to split because in the beginning, I was questioning myself and whether it was the right thing. Anton has really helped me a lot to go through this process, and now I feel very confident working with him. This is definitely good for us to be successful, and so we’ll keep working and pushing hard to win more matches.”
Talking about Anton, she added:
“I made the decision, then, to work with Anton as a coach, and I think we’re doing well. I want to keep working with just him because I feel much better when I’m with someone who knows me well, and I don’t have to overthink. It really affected my focus because I ended up expending energy on other things that there wasn’t enough left over for my matches.”
Aryna will be ranked no.10 after her title in Linz. If she keeps on playing as she did in the last 2 tournaments, he will become a serious contender for the Australian Open.
Aryna Sabalenka in 2020
Currently the world no.11, the Belarussian played her last match on the 15th of November when she overcame Elise Mertens 7-5 6-2 in the final in Linz to win her 8th career title.
During this season the Belarussian has a composed 29-10 match record. The Belarussian conquered 3 titles in 2020 in Doha, in Ostrava and in Linz.
