Aryna Sabalenka’s Australian Open final and the best and worst of Grand Slam problems

MELBOURNE, Australia — It’s hard to have a better 16 months in tennis than the past 16 months for Aryna Sabalenka.

The roll started in September 2024, with a redemptive U.S. Open title, a year after a raucous collapse on Arthur Ashe against Coco Gauff. Sabalenka has been mostly dominant ever since, reaching four of the next five Grand Slam finals, plus another big final at the WTA Tour Finals. She has been the year-end world No. 1 for two seasons in a row.

Reaching finals is not what Sabalenka wants to do. She wants to win them. And after another Grand Slam final loss in Melbourne Saturday night, the pain of the experience was clear in the gallows humor of the trophy ceremony.

“Thank you to my team for always being there, for enjoying me losing finals,” she joked on the court as she held a finalist’s plate at a major for the third time in her last four appearances. Elena Rybakina turned off the heat on a bubbling comeback from Sabalenka to win the 2026 Australian Open title 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, and to crystallize the tennis quandary in which Sabalenka finds herself.

In so many ways, the Belarusian is a runaway world No. 1.

She has built up a massive lead in the rankings. Her consistency at the biggest events has put her more than 3,000 points ahead of Iga Świątek, the world No. 2. Świątek remains Sabalenka’s top rival, but they have barely played finals with the biggest titles on the line, and it’s Sabalenka who is holding up her end of the bargain in getting there.

But in this one way, she is not the runaway world No. 1. Where Świątek is 6-0 in Grand Slam finals, Sabalenka is 4-4.

Sabalenka, 27, has lost four of her past five big finals, including those three defeats at Grand Slams.

“Today I’m a loser, maybe tomorrow I’m a winner, maybe again a loser,” she said when it was over. “I feel like I lost most of the finals I made in the Grand Slams,” she said after the match.

She hasn’t — but she would still like to correct the record in a positive direction. Still, this three-set loss to Rybakina wasn’t like 12 months ago on the same court, when Sabalenka didn’t show up until the second set against Madison Keys, who was playing the tennis of her life.

This loss wasn’t last June at the French Open, when the wind and Coco Gauff’s relentless defense caused Sabalenka to combust, first on the court, and then in the news conference after.

This wasn’t last November in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the WTA Tour Finals championship match against Rybakina. There, Sabalenka, couldn’t summon her best level in the most important match, and Rybakina had her scratching and clawing for survival until the second-set tiebreak, when Sabalanka, a master of the format who won 22 of 24 tiebreaks on the season, could not manage a point.

This was something different, a tight match that turned on two five-game swings over the final hour. First, Sabalenka won five in a row to take the second set and build what looked like a sturdy 3-0 lead in the third. Then Rybakina reeled off five straight games herself.

That’s where Sabalenka will have her regrets. Rybakina did wrestle control back, but Sabalenka made it easier for her to do so, with a handful of loose points when serving at 3-1 and 3-3. All of a sudden, the finish line had been in sight. Just as quickly, it was receding.

A short backhand at 3-1, 15-30 allowed Rybakina to step in and lace a backhand of her own down the line. On the next point, Sabalenka rushed a forehand from the baseline into the middle of the net.

Two games later, she started off with a backhand into the net. Then she didn’t move her feet on another one, lofting a lunging effort well wide of the court. After saving one break point, she had a short forehand, the kind that she so often rifles for a winner, to get to deuce. She pounded it into the net.

“It felt like in a few seconds it was 3-4, and I was down with a break,” she said. “It was very fast.”

It often happens that way with Sabalenka, an aggressive, first-strike player who doesn’t play a lot of long points. The average rally lasted three shots Saturday night. Just five of 184 points lasted nine shots. She can be feast or famine, agony or ecstasy. She has won 43 of her past 46 matches in Australia, but two of those losses have come on the country’s biggest court.

Sabalenka is so different from the way she was three years ago when she captured her first Grand Slam title here, in another three-set battle with Rybakina. In the U.S. Open final last year, which she won to retain the redemptive title of 2024, she frittered an early lead against Amanda Anisimova and nearly smacked a ball into the sky.

Then she thought better of the situation, and tossed the ball away.

Battling through some first-set frustration in Melbourne Saturday night, she lifted her racket and was about to swat it at the ground. Then she slowly lowered it and moved on to the next point. Even in the third set, as Rybakina grabbed the match away from her, she didn’t howl at the stars and self-flagellate as she once did. One aggravated bounce of the racket was all she betrayed.

Rybakina lifted her game in crunch time, lacing winners into the postage stamps to the end and sealing the title with an ace. Sabalenka tried to match her, but she couldn’t find the court often enough, or with enough intensity.

Each of her Grand Slam final losses has felt different, she said. Different opponents. Different problems during the matches. Different mistakes.

“Some of them were great matches, I played incredible,” she said. “I take them individually.”

That’s probably for the best. Sabalenka is the best female tennis player in the world — except when it comes to winning the titles by which this sport’s records and reckonings are drawn up.

It is a great and terrible problem to have all at once.

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