Aryna Sabalenka: The Unpredictable Tennis Star

It’s less than a month since Aryna Sabalenka told the world that she felt like walking away from tennis. The world No 1 had suffered an almighty implosion. Sabalenka is as famous for her implosions as she is for her on-court ferocity. But this was a different level.

She had been playing at her imperious best in the French Open, one of tennis’s four major tournaments. Winner after winner from the back of the court, and when she bullied her opponents back to the baseline she’d dupe them with the most delicate drop-shot. In the last 16 against Naomi Osaka she looked invincible. And then came the quarter-final. By now, all her main rivals were out. The 28-year-old had a clear path through to winning her fifth grand slam singles title. Again, she was playing well against the world’s No 25, Diana Shnaider. Sabalenka won the first set easily, 6-3, and was 5-3 up in the second set. Victory was an inevitability. And then it happened. One game lost. Then another. And another. The wind had picked up, playing conditions got ever worse, the organisers failed to close the roof. And Sabalenka was walloping shot after shot out of court.

By now Sabalenka was fighting herself as much as her opponent and the wind. She screamed at her coaching team in frustration, as she so often does. But the abuse she levelled at herself was even harsher. Eventually she lost 10 games on the trot against a player few non-tennis aficionados had heard of. Shnaider won the final two sets 7-5 and 6-0. When she finally addressed the press, Sabalenka was still in a state of shock. “I just want to quit tennis right now,” she said, admitting that she had fallen into a “deep, dark hole”.

In the same tournament, the world men’s No 1 player, Jannik Sinner, had suffered a comparable fate, but he was physically unwell. This was different. It was one of the great collapses in tennis history. But perhaps what was most astonishing was that it was also not entirely surprising. We have learned to expect the unexpected with Aryna Sabalenka. Implosions, explosions, offensive comments, scandal-hit relationships, accusations of gamesmanship, allegations of undermining the women’s game, reconciliatory on-court dances – the Belarusian is always just a few shots from the next controversy.

Today, she’s in Berlin and we chat by video link ahead of Wimbledon, the next grand slam in the calendar. The Paris meltdown is still raw, but it’s not a topic she wants to avoid. If anything, she’d prefer to talk it out of her system. The funny thing is, she says, she waited for ages before addressing the press to make sure she’d regained control. She grins. “I actually took an hour and a half before doing that press conference and I thought, like, OK, I’m better now. And then I just went there and I said, ‘I want to quit tennis!’”

Did she come away, thinking, “My God, what did I just say?” Another smile. “No. Actually I thought I’d been pretty good.” Really? “Yes. What d’you expect me to say if you ask me how I feel at a moment like that? ‘I feel great, I feel fantastic.’?” Of course not. Sabalenka is Sabalenka. She’s always going to tell it straight. “I went there and I said the facts. Why would they keep the roof open when the conditions are insane? When it’s almost like a hurricane and the tennis was ugly? I said everything that makes sense. I respected my opponent. I wasn’t rude to her or anything. I didn’t want to go there and say something ridiculous like I said last year.”

Ah, last year. Another implosion – and another explosion. This time the implosion was in the final of the French Open against the American Coco Gauff. She had been one set up against the American, and went on to lose by two sets to one. The real drama happened after the match, again in the press conference. Sabalenka said it was the “worst final I ever played”, adding: “I think she won the match not because she played incredible, just because I made all of those mistakes.” It was ugly, graceless and disrespectful.

Sabalenka tells me it was so much worse than anything that happened in Paris this year. She felt ashamed of herself. “That was tough. When the emotions settled, I just came to my team saying, ‘Guys, can you believe I said that?’ I felt so mean and I felt not like myself.” So what did she do? “I waited a bit of time and then I messaged Coco apologising and saying that of course I respect her. Coco’s such a nice girl. I got lucky, because she understands that. I feel like if ever she goes nuts on me, I’ll be, like, ‘Girl, throw it on me. I get it. You’re good.’”

I’d not expected to warm to Sabalenka. It’s not that I dislike short-fused, occasionally badly behaved tennis players. Serena Williams, who had more than her share of on-court confrontations, is one of my heroes. But Sabalenka is always breaking rackets, berating her box, saying she’s been wronged in one way or another. In person, though, she’s unrecognisable – smiley, funny and self-aware about her flaws.

Her reconciliation with Gauff showed her at her best. Sabalenka has always been fond of a dance. Sometimes her dancing is funny (jokey dance-offs with Novak Djokovic), sometimes preening, and occasionally joyous. As was the case here. She and Gauff showed off their moves to Bob Sinclar’s Rock This Party (Everybody Dance Now). Sabalenka captioned her TikTok: “TikTok Dances always had a way of bringing people together.”

How did the dance come about? “We just scheduled the practice. And I was just, like, ‘Girl, don’t you think it would be fun like to do a dance and loosen it up a bit, so people in the community understand that we’re good?’” They did the dance a month after the fallout. Did it take much rehearsing? “No. I knew the dance, and Coco’s so talented she picked it up really quickly. It was two tries and we’d done it. It was very cool. It was fun.”

Fun is not necessarily a word you’d associate with Sabalenka because she’s so intense in matches. She also understands why people might have preconceptions about her. Sabalenka tells a story about her best friend in tennis, the Spaniard Paula Badosa, who can also seem intimidatingly frosty on court. “When we met, I was, like, ‘Oh, I thought you were a bitch!’ And she’s, like, ‘I thought you were a bitch, too.’ I was, like, ‘Well, I guess that’s not true, so we can be friends.’ She’s, like, ‘Yeah, we’re actually quite similar.’ I guess it’s just the attitude that we carry on court.”

Sabalenka says there’s another thing that makes people think she’s unfriendly. Her face. “When you see me for the first time, you’re probably going to think that I’m a bitch because of my Slavic face. It doesn’t help with that.” What does she mean? She exaggerates her natural features, and suddenly she’s severe, unsmiling, long‑and-sour-faced. You wouldn’t mess with her. “When I’m walking with this flat face and no emotions, I can look very aggressive. So I understand why some people think I’m a bitch. When you get to know me better you understand that it’s just something I was born with.”

Sabalenka grew up in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, a country that gained independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. She came from a sporty family. Her grandfather had been a boxer and her father, Sergey, was briefly a professional ice-hockey player, retiring aged 19 after a serious car accident. He went on to make a living in the auto-repair business, while her mother studied economics and worked in the corporate world.

The young Sabalenka was strong and spirited. As a little girl, she says her parents were determined to find her an activity to keep her out of trouble. “I was a really active kid. I wouldn’t do random stuff that kids would do back then, like smoking. Kids were rough in Belarus. They wanted me to live a healthier life. One day when I was six, my dad was passing by tennis courts and he thought, ‘Why not?’ And I tried it.”

Was he a good player? “In tennis? No. But he encouraged me. He wasn’t that type of parent who would jump into the process and become my coach.”

I ask her what it was like growing up in Belarus, a country with a population of 9 million led by the autocratic Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for 32 years. “I think people there are the kindest people. You can let your kid be outside till late and nothing’s going to happen. It’s beautiful. It’s super green, and I loved growing up there.” She pauses. “It can be tough in some ways.” Another pause. How? “Coaches can be really tough on you. You have to be almost perfect for them to even give you a compliment.” What did they criticise her for? “I was overhitting the ball and I couldn’t find my targets. They called me stupid. But if I’m stupid and they were coaching me, what were they? But, overall, people who live there are super kind and will always help you.”

Was she academic at school? “I was clever!” She laughs, embarrassed. “It sounds so funny, ‘I was clever’. But I was very, very good at school. I had the highest marks till I started training more and skipping some classes. My grades got lower, but they were still closer to the highest grades. I was super smart in maths and physics. But I shifted my focus on to tennis.”

She adored the game from the off. “I love that you can change anything at any time. You have to win 24 points to win a set and it’s two sets. And if something goes wrong you still have the third set. I love that everything is in your hands. It’s not like rhythmic gymnastics, when they rate your performance and winning depends on judges. I love the competition. I love to win. I love the feeling of improving, of winning the trophies that you’ve been dreaming of, and the life that you’re living. I love it and I’m definitely not quitting.” Point made.

It’s typical of Sabalenka to say you have to win 24 points to win a set. Twenty-four points is the minimum it takes to win a set, and is incredibly unlikely (you’d have to win 6-0). But this says everything about her mentality. You sense she does go out expecting to win every single point. And the fact that she doesn’t win every point (let alone game, set and match) is at the heart of her frustrations.

She turned professional aged 17 in 2015, and won her first WTA tournament in 2017 at the Mumbai Open. Two years later, her father died suddenly at the age of 43 after contracting meningitis. She was devastated. In the Netflix tennis series Break Point, she said that they had a shared dream – that she would win two grand slam titles by the time she was 25. It became an obsession. She felt she had to do it for him. On screen, she said, “Now I’m 24 and there is zero in my pocket.” She was beginning to panic. Sergey was her biggest motivation; without him she wouldn’t be here. But in 2023, at 24, she won her first major – the Australian Open. And a year later, she successfully defended the title. She also won the US Open in the same year and repeated the feat in 2025.

From the earliest days, Sabalenka’s strength was her strength. She is 6ft tall, broad, and unbelievably powerful. She could muscle her way to victory from the baseline, dominating rallies from the back of the court with flat, skiddy groundstrokes that routinely equal or exceed the ball speeds of the top players in the men’s game. When she won the US Open in 2024, her average forehand was 80mph, faster than Carlos Alcaraz, Sinner and Djokovic at the time. Her fastest serve, at 133mph, is the second fastest in the history of the women’s game, and is only 3mph slower than Alcaraz’s quickest.

In Break Point, before she had her first grand slam triumph, she said her emotions had destroyed her game. “I would just start overreacting to everything … I didn’t want to be an emotional child on court any more. I had to learn how to keep my head in it, because, when I lost my cool, my opponents could see what was going on in my head and they would step in and play better.”

I ask her how she feels about this quote now. “I think it’s always going to be on ongoing battle with my emotions. Life throws stuff at you you’ve never experienced before and you’re just going through different things for the first time. You don’t even know how you’re going to react, and you’re always fighting. And I have to say that since that series was recorded I have improved a lot. I’m definitely much better on court right now.”

What has changed more than anything is her attitude to her emotionalism. Today, she’s more accepting of it. She says it’s simply part of who she is. “Even if sometimes you see me getting emotional or yelling at my box, it’s something that I need. It’s something that we spoke about with my team; that whenever I feel like I’m holding too much, just throw the racket, yell something, let it go. Now I’m in better control, but, of course, still I do things that I’m not proud of.”

Tennis is regarded as one of the most refined and bourgeois of ball sports. But it could well be the most attritional. Whereas most mass-appeal ballgames are team sports, in singles tennis you’re out there on your own. Every rally results in a point won or lost. Tennis has broken so many players mentally over the years. John McEnroe threw tantrums to cope with the pressure, Serena Williams once threatened to shove a tennis ball down a lineswoman’s throat, and Alexander Zverev struck the umpire’s chair multiple times with his racket. Last October, at the Wuhan Open, Sabalenka hurled her racket across the court towards the player benches, narrowly avoiding a ballboy. Again, it was mid meltdown (she had been leading Jessica Pegula 5-2 in the final set before losing 7-6).

I tell her I interviewed Björn Borg, the tennis great whose Samurai-like refusal to show emotion on court ended up destroying him. He walked away from the game at his peak and had a breakdown lasting decades. Her green eyes light up, and she nods passionately. “See. Everyone says, ‘You have to be in control, you have to be flat with your emotions, don’t show anything.’ And I found it was destroying me from the inside. You’re just holding so much. So I asked my team to be OK with me yelling at them; like, just throwing this aggression to someone that can handle it, just so I can continue fighting on the court.”

Her screaming (whether at her box or herself in frustration, or in delight after hitting a winner) has been measured at 100 decibels, the threshold where prolonged exposure can cause permanent hearing damage. She has been accused of using it as a weapon to destabilise her opponents, something she has always denied. I ask if she’s a screamer in everyday life. If you were in a traffic jam, I say, frustrated as hell, would you release one of your 100-decibel shrieks?

“No!” she says, horrified. “I think it’s really difficult to get into conflict with me. You have to do something really, really painful. You have to betray me. In real life, I don’t like conflict. I like to spread the joy and feel the joy around me. I’m a different person.”

But she thinks that’s par