World ranking: Linz winner Sabalenka wintered in the top 10
Linz winner Aryna Sabalenka has made her way back into the top 10 thanks to her strong season finish.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: Nov 16, 2020, 05:00 pm
11 wins in a row, top 3 titles in 2020 and in the top 10 over the winter weeks: Aryna Sabalenka has been doing well in the past few weeks. After her victory in Doha in February, she has now followed suit with triumphs in Ostrava and Linz. And for the first time since August 2019 she is among the top ten players in the world - a year ago she was even ninth.
Crazy above all: In Ostrava, she was 6-0 and 4-0 behind Sara Sorribes Tormo - and made twelve games in a row. "The match turned everything around, " she said after the win in Linz . "It gave me a lot of strength because after I won that I felt more relaxed. And I believed that I could come back from everything." She felt freedom - and the feeling of having everything under control when entering the square.
She has also learned a lot about herself when it comes to warming up - she has to move around a lot, even "get tired before I get on the pitch".
Sabalenka and the Grand Slams
The focus for Sabalenka will be on the Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, where she is still waiting for her big breakthrough - experts had already expected her to win in the past two years. The Belarusian is still waiting for a quarter-finals at one of the majors. One problem: she thought too often how big this and that tournament was, "I put a lot of pressure on myself". Ultimately, she has to go to the field and bring her level, give everything. And just "control what I can control". She used to try to control everything, thought too much. "And that apparently didn't work."