Aryna Sabalenka declared that her next step after she was knocked out of Wimbledon by Naomi Osaka was to get ‘completely drunk’ after she was handed her first straight-sets defeat at a Grand Slam since 2020.
The World No 1 was quick into press after losing her round-of-16 tie against Osaka, and was initially wrong-footed when a reporter told her ‘commiserations’ for her efforts.
‘Did you say congratulations?’ Sabalenka said, on guard, before she was corrected. ‘Oh my God, sorry.’
‘(I feel) no emotions,’ she continued, smiling. ‘Just know that I can handle myself much better than last year.
‘Obviously, guys, if you were expecting something really fun, not going to happen. Probably just going to be short answers.
‘I f***ed it up this year. Next year I’ll try to do better,’ she said, later adding that her plan was to ‘get completely drunk, forget about tennis, and try to get in better shape’.
Aryna Sabalenka cut a weary figure as she admitted that she would be drowning her sorrows after her Wimbledon exit
Osaka played the match of her grass-court career to bury the world No 1 in straight sets
Before their fourth-round meeting on Sunday, Sabalenka had beaten Osaka three times this year. But as shadows crept across Wimbledon’s biggest stage, the Japanese four-time Grand Slam champion pulled one back – and announced herself as a major contender for the title as she beat her rival 6-2, 7-6(2).
It wasn’t always this way. In 2018, Osaka claimed the maiden win at the US Open on her way to her first Grand Slam title. Sabalenka has admitted it had been a ‘turning point’ in her career. From that defeat, Sabalenka was forced to watch as her vanquisher won three more majors, and to wait until 2023, as Osaka began her maternity leave ahead of the birth of her daughter Shai, for her own.
Years later, Osaka and Centre Court too have sticky history. She has played on its surface three times, losing all of them, and admitted on Friday that it was, in her mind, ‘the scariest Centre Court’ of all.
Nerves, if they were there for Osaka when she stepped onto court in her now-ubiquitous kimono-inspired walk-on outfit, were unnoticeable. After the dust had settled, she shared that she had viewed the contest as a ‘practice match’.
‘I was just telling myself, like, “There’s a really big crowd for this practice match, but we’re going to get through it”,’ she said. If that was the practice, one wonders, what does the real thing look like?
Sabalenka whistled her way through an opening service game to love but what followed was a dismantling as Osaka showed off the strongest grass-court form of her career. She attributes her step up on the surface to the help of the ‘big Polish man’ in her box – coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, but this supreme Grand Slam level, regardless of the surface, has been simmering within the player for some time.
Osaka refused to wilt in the face of Sabalenka’s powerful serve, her return off both backhand and forehand wings bulleted back across the net to heap pressure on Sabalenka on the baseline. Within minutes of her first hold on Centre Court this week, Osaka had her first break as she wrapped a breathless exchange of backhands with a pin-point accurate winner.
Desperate to recapture momentum, Sabalenka tore into Osaka’s weaker second serve, hunting bombastic winners. But with her opponent meeting her power with more power – no common occurrence – her efforts became wilder, and were struck further. It took Osaka just 32 minutes to win the first set, only four minutes more required for the world No 1 than what she needed for her last opponent Daria Kasatkina, ranked 64 places higher.
Between the sets, Sabalenka sought sanctuary off-court, but upon her return, found no drop-off in her rival. There was more fight in the Belarusian, as she grew louder and more expressive, and successfully knuckling down in a thorny fifth game ensured she avoided an another early break of serve. But Osaka’s quality kept her own games as short as Sabalenka’s dragged, the No 1 seed unused to having to defend instead of dictate.
Chasing the Belarusian to a tiebreak, Osaka powered back Sabalenka serve to force a ropey backhand from her opponent for the early break, and a second unforced error on her forehand to put her four points clear. An ace from Sabalenka briefly stopped the rot, but as she funked her second-to-last ball into the net, Sabalenka watched Osaka set fire to two of her most dazzling Grand Slam records.
Osaka admitted after her match that she is now more keen to focus on her tennis, rather than her elaborate walk-on outfits
Before Sunday, Sabalenka had won 21 Grand Slam tiebreaks in a row, outstripping Novak Djokovic’s record of 19 at this year’s Australian Open. She had not been beaten in straight sets at a major for nearly six years, since the 2020 US Open. No wonder her final ball, the one struck up into the air in frustration, wedged itself in the Centre Court roof.
‘That’s a good statistic, right?’ Sabalenka said ruefully as her torched record was repeated back to her after the match. ‘It’s okay. I’ll get back stronger. We’ll start to build everything from scratch for the next one.’
Osaka will continue her travails on Tuesday against the No 10 seed, Karolina Muchova, who knocked out the 2024 champion Barbora Krejcikova 7-5, 5-7, 6-3.
But she admitted that she will do so with rather less emphasis on her fashion than in previous rounds.
‘I definitely wanted to (switch up my outfit) today, but I actually really wanted to focus on the match. So that was me being very tame,’ Osaka said.
‘But definitely there’s a couple things I can add. Well, ironically I kind of want to focus on my tennis now, so I might dial back a little bit.’
