A year ago, the Australian Open crowd was introduced to Aryna Sabalenka for the first time, and the young Belarusian made quite the impression.
Ranked 66 in the world at the time, Sabalenka was fierce, loud, and gave home favourite Ash Barty a serious scare in the opening round at Melbourne Park before falling in three close sets.
Fast-forward 12 months and Sabalenka is tipped by many – including the likes of John McEnroe and Brad Gilbert – as a main contender for the Australian Open crown.
The 20-year-old rocketed up the rankings to her current position of No. 11 and has won three titles since last August, most recently triumphing in the opening week of the season in Shenzhen.
On Monday, she calmly and confidently began her campaign in Melbourne with a 6-1 6-4 success over Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, in front of a buoyant Court 3 crowd.
“It was a really great atmosphere, a lot of people watching, which I didn’t really expect. Someone was screaming my name. I was really afraid to come here to be honest. Last year people didn’t really like me because I was screaming like crazy on the court. I think I’m a little bit quieter now,” Sabalenka sheepishly confessed in an interview with ausopen.com after her match.
“I’m so excited and I’m so happy to feel this atmosphere and to feel them support me.”
Sabalenka cuts an intimidating figure on the tennis court, which is a stark contrast to her bubbly personality off it. You can hear her devastating groundstrokes from the opposite side of Melbourne Park, her racquet destroying the ball on each contact.
On return, she takes one step inside the baseline and her opponents almost immediately miss their serve as she tempts them into going for more.
Over the past seven months, ever since she hired former ATP player Dmitry Tursunov as her coach, Sabalenka has been working on honing her sheer power and using it to her advantage.
“Kind of like a painter, they have their own signature style, so she’s starting to have a little bit more of that,” explains Tursunov.
“She’s starting to understand how she can use her strengths and cover up her weaknesses. It’s a process, but she’s willing to go through that process because her end goals are very clear and they’re pretty high. She understands this is just the beginning of the way to get to the top.”
Sabalenka’s targets are indeed high. She doesn’t just want to win Grand Slams, she’d like to win all four in one year.
“It sounds crazy, but we all want to do that,” she says bluntly.
The numbers Sabalenka has put together since last June make it easy to forget that this is just her second-ever Australian Open main draw, and sixth overall at the Slams.
The 2018 season witnessed ‘The Summer of Sabalenka’, in which the Minsk native made the semifinals in Cincinnati, won the title in New Haven and reached the fourth round at the US Open.
Her summer flourish extended to autumn as she lifted her biggest trophy to date in Wuhan. Between June and October, she notched eight victories against top-10 opponents.
Tursunov relates Sabalenka’s fast rise to the fact that she’s a fast learner. Sabalenka had her first proper offseason at the end of last year, which included a five-week training block in Thailand.
“I expected to die there,” Sabalenka says with a laugh, proud of the hard work she put in.
“I’m so passionate about tennis, so everything Dmitry tells me, I’m always listening to him, even if it looks like I’m not.
“Nobody really believed in me in Belarus, except like my sponsor, I think the president [of the federation] and a few coaches. Mostly they didn’t believe in me, which was really good motivation for me to listen, have all the information, to think about that and try to absorb all this information quickly.”
While there’s plenty of room for progress for Sabalenka, Tursunov also acknowledges that “there isn’t a single person that can wipe her off the court”. His charge isn’t paying too much attention to that fact, nor is she getting carried away by all those legends and pundits picking her as tournament favourite.
“When I win a title, my first feeling is, ‘Yes, yes, I did it’, and the next feeling immediately is, ‘I need to keep going’. I already forgot the title, but for three seconds it’s like something unbelievable. I always respect the opponents, and I always respect having this opportunity to play on this level,” she says.
Her next challenge in Melbourne will be Great Britain’s Katie Boulter. Sabalenka will no doubt garner lots of attention with a spirit as fierce as the tiger tattoo on her left arm, and a game that is becoming more and more dangerous by the day.