Aryna Sabalenka’s latest victim on her march to a third straight Australian Open decider at Rod Laver Arena likens squaring off against the world No.1 in full flight to a virtual-reality nightmare – the complete package with no discernible weaknesses.
Desperate to fight fire with fire in their semifinal, Paula Badosa could only contain the sweeping inferno for so long before she was sent tumbling, unable to stem the flow any longer in a straight-sets defeat.
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One woman, 19th seed Madison Keys, is now tasked with stifling Sabalenka’s bid to become the first woman to three-peat at Melbourne since Martina Hingis from 1997-1999.
“With Aryna, it's more like winners everywhere. Sometimes you're like, I don't know, I'm just walking around the court because I feel like she's playing a PlayStation,” Badosa said.
“Today she was like that. So sometimes I'm like, ‘What's happening?’ I don't have time even to think.”
There were moments, for all her defensive brilliance, second seed Iga Swiatek surely felt the same given the at-times 150km/h baseline winners flying from Keys’ strings in the second semifinal beneath a closed roof.
Where the American’s on-court peaks and troughs have been among the most stark on tour throughout her career, her sustained pressure even when staring down a match point against the Pole, was impressive.
“She made less mistakes, less mistakes than on those matches I won against her,” Swiatek said. “I also played against her in Cincinnati where she also kind of played perfectly, and I had nothing to say. I know she could do both.
“I didn't know which one she's going to be today. I think she was just more solid than when we played these matches that I won.”
A Sabalenka victory would tie the Open era record of three straight titles held by Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and Hingis.
Already assured of retaining the top ranking on Monday, she enters the showdown with a 4-1 record against Keys, unbeaten since Berlin in 2021.
Their most memorable stoush came in the 2023 US Open semifinals when the American, riding her home crowd, served for a place in her second major final only to be reeled in.
“I was under so much pressure. It felt like she was just going for her shots, and everything was going in. She was just crushing it,” Sabalenka recalled on Thursday.
“I think at some moments she would just start questioning herself. I saw that and I felt like, ‘Okay, now is the moment to make sure that you put as many balls back as you can’. I think that was the crucial moment. I just turned around things … A little bit faster than here, so I think the conditions suit her really well there.”
For Keys to fulfil her Grand Slam dream, she must become the first player to deny the world’s top two-ranked women at a major since Svetlana Kuznetsova at Roland Garros 2009 and the first at the Australian Open since Serena Williams in 2005.
A decade after her maiden Slam semifinal at Melbourne Park, maturity has helped the 29-year-old carry less of the burden of expectation, especially following a nerve-riddled defeat to Sloane Stephens in her sole previous venture to a Slam decider in New York in 2017.
Keys' game style too has developed and she admitted that her rival in Saturday night’s final is now the benchmark for controlled aggression.
“I have always been impressed with how she's been able to do that,” Keys said. “The one thing I really wanted to try to be better at was not playing more passive in big points and really, honestly, just trying to emulate the way she trusts her game and the way she goes after it…
“I think one of the big things, after I lost to Aryna at the US Open, I felt like I tried to play safe, and I wasn't playing how I wanted to in the big moments. That felt so bad.
“I just felt like if I can go out and do what I want to do and really just, again, be uncomfortable at times and just actually go for it and continue to play the way I play my best tennis, and I lose, then I can walk away and say, ‘Okay, I did my best, she beat me, that's fine’.”