THE STORY

After several difficult chapters in her earlier tennis story, a bold and brilliant Aryna Sabalenka reset the narrative with a first Grand Slam singles title at Australian Open 2023. VIVIENNE CHRISTIE reports

Aryna Sabalenka, still just 24, had already experienced many chapters in professional tennis. From hopeful early beginnings, there had also been encouraging steady progress, before personal di culties and form frustrations threatened to make her tennis story one of sadly unful lled potential.

But at Australian Open 2023 it was at last a happy chapter for Sabalenka, as she rose above all challenges to li her rst Grand Slam trophy. “(This) is the best day of my life,” declared the beaming Belarusian, champagne in hand as she celebrated the life-changing title. “I’m just super happy (and) proud.”

As were the many Sabalenka supporters who agreed that it was hard to imagine a player more deserving of major triumphs. Bold and brilliant as she claimed 11 straight match wins to start the 2023 season – her Australian Open title preceded by a title run in Adelaide – the Minsk-born champion had also bravely taken control to achieve the biggest breakthrough of her career so far.

A true appreciation for Sabalenka’s Grand Slam story required an understanding of its undeniably turbulent prequel, in which her rise to world No.2 was accompanied by welldocumented lapses in form.

Beset by ba ing serving woes, she recorded 428 double faults – 151 more than any other WTA player – in 55 matches last season and had to beg her coach, Anton Dubrov, not to quit the team. “I knew that it was not about him, it’s just something about me,” Sabalenka re ected. “I just had to gure out the problem.”

And to her credit, the hardworking competitor did exactly that. A er consulting with renowned big-server Mark Philippoussis early in the season, Sabalenka employed another Australian, biomechanics trainer Gavin MacMillan, to help overhaul her service motion.

But mental improvements, Sabalenka knew, was an area she had to tackle alone. Opting to end her working arrangement with a sports psychologist, she considered the mindset that needed reframing.

“I always had this weird feeling that when people would come to me and ask for a signature, I would be like, ‘Why are you asking for signature? I’m nobody. I’m a player. I don’t have a Grand Slam and all this stuff’,” she related.

“I just changed how I feel. I start to respect myself more. I start to understand that actually I’m here

SAM STOSUR

Even as the retiring Sam Stosur made her last appearance as a professional player at Australian Open 2023, the passionate tennis lover was already contemplating her next steps in the sport.

Much had changed since a 17-yearold Sam Stosur launched her rst Australian Open campaign in 2002.

The courts were green, the tournament’s footprint hadn’t yet expanded to such generous proportions and the thenworld No.258 was still to fully appreciate some of the key lessons that would eventually shape her Grand Slam-winning tennis career.

“I played Greta Ahn in the first round, and I was so excited about playing Martina Hingis in the second round (but) I didn’t even win my first round,” Stosur recalled with a laugh ahead of Australian Open 2023, having announced that a 21st campaign in her home major would be the final tournament of her professional career.

“So that was a good learning curve – when you’re young, kind of junior starting out, not to get ahead of yourself.”

Yet for all that had changed more than two decades after that Grand Slam debut, much remained the same for the Queensland-born Stosur, who first took up tennis when she was gifted a racquet as an eight-year-old.

Asked to re ect on the best piece of advice she’d received in her many years of tennis, Stosur considered the technical elements – learning how to best combine her devasting serve and forehand, for example – and the mind shi s that helped

MAJOR STAR: After her debut at AO 2002, Sam Stosur went on to win Grand Slam titles in all disciplines.

VIVIENNE CHRISTIE

Reports

her to simply enjoy her tennis, before pointing to important values she learned as a junior.

“When I was young (my coach) Nick, I think he’s the one that really taught me to always try your best. You know, you shake hands at the end of the day, you respect your opponent, yourself, what’s going on,” Stosur said.

“And it’s not like we ever sat down, and he said, ‘this is how you got to be’ or anything like that (but) I’ve always then grown up through my whole career to try and have that way of being.”

It was an approach that carried Stosur to Grand Slam heights across all disciplines – making her the only Australian player to achieve that impressive sweep in the past four decades.

Achieving her Grand Slam breakthrough in the Australian Open 2005 mixed doubles alongside fellow Queenslander Scott Draper, Stosur went on to lift trophies at all four majors.