Based on batting and batting, racquet in hand, Aryna Sabalenka beats Elena Rybakina (4-6, 6-3 and 6-4, after 2h 28m) and sets off for her first big throw, dem, this Saturday she has been longing for and that starts in Melbourne where the strongest prize will be awarded because this final was about and blows there is nobody who attacks with more violence than she, the queen of the hammer. The champion is touched and weeps, bites the trophy and raises it to the Melbourne sky at night. deserves it. Few players have shown as much commitment as her in recent years and finally, in this sweet gift that accumulates from win to win, she fully achieves in this first month of the year, a success that underscores the ever more accentuated evolution of the times: more and more speed.
Its peak only emphasizes the dizziness and strength. The arm predominates and the wrists are absent. Sabalenka is no virtuoso, but in this prevailing scenario of punchers and one-way tennis, she has plenty of numbers to make for an interesting harvest. He withstood bingo in a major after collecting 11 trophies – some of them prestigious, like Madrid, Doha or Wuhan – and establishing himself in the noble zone of the circuit; As of 2018, his name is in the top 11, but in the moment of truth, victim of his enormous demand and appetite, he ended up DJing. He stayed in the semifinals three times: two years ago in Wimbledon and at the US Open, last year again in New York.
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Now Melbourne are resplendent with their first coronation, which propels them into second place in the rankings – still a long way off Poland’s Iga Swiatek – and arrive after an even trench fight, protecting one like the other on the bottom line. The Belarusian is braver, the Kazakh more speculative. Sabalenka, 24, voices herself from start to finish as the fighter, unleashing punches at the sack while Rybakina, another halm – 1.84 compared to the winner’s 1.82 – holds serve and addresses the opponent’s error trusted. The second (23) is a quiet diesel, ice in substance and form, a total contrast to the first, visceral and fiery. An open book.
Nothing bothers one, unchanged, while the other screams, wails, laughs, celebrates and leads a permanent monologue. Sabalenka talks to himself, afraid that these three opportunities to seal the pulse are weighing him down too much; One of them disappears after another of those double faults – five in the first set – that consumed her until spring when she decided to hire an engineer and change her biomechanics. It doesn’t self-destruct this time. Something seems to have changed. In this year 2023, the service sheet shows 11 games and just as many wins, only one set was conceded.
It sets the signature in an episode that is the living expression of these new times of power and more power, all points resolved with cannon shots or slaps in the face. The rush is reflected in the stats and in some services reaching 195 kilometers per hour, although these balls are difficult to move; There are 51 winning shots compared to Rybakina’s 31, bland in the last Wimbledon champion’s proposal.
When push comes to shove, there is no stronger tennis player today than Sabalenka who finally gets away with it. You already have your sweetheart. Since the legendary Serena Williams won her last Major, Australia 2017, the record has included 15 different winners at the Majors. Since Australian Ashleigh Barty retired in March last year, Swiatek has ruled with an iron fist. Rybakina appeared on the London lawn and now the Belarusian is celebrating in style. In Melbourne this time the law of the strongest applies.
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