No One Slam Wonder Status For Arnya Sabalenka

Arnya Sabalenka won’t be a one Slam tournament wonder.

The swashbuckling, hard-hitting Belarussian belter of a tennis player successfully defended her Australian Open title for her second major tournament victory of her career with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Qinwen Zheng of China in the final.

Sabalenka won the title without losing a set in her seven matches, including a semifinal win over Coco Gauff that avenged her loss to the American in the U.S. Open final last September.

“The Belarusian unleashed her supply of powerful groundstrokes from the very start, completely overpowering the No. 12 seed and pinning her far behind the baseline for the majority of the 76-minute long match,” wrote Issy Ronald on CNN.com 

Christopher Clarey, the former New York Times tennis writer now author, described Sabalenka as “tennis’s extrovert in chief” base on her bubbly personality, wrote in his Substack email that Sabalenka “pranced, glittering trophy in hand, in her red dress through the corridors of Melbourne Park and then kept the party going with her entourage much later into Saturday night.”

Despite her loss, 21-year-old Zheng became only the second Chinese player after two-time Grand Slam winner Li Na to reach the singles final in a Grand Slam tournament. After the final, Sabalenka, in a perhaps a play to gain more support in the Chinese economic market, posted a video to fans in China as documented here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/tennis/article-13015673/Aryna-Sabalenka-forced-apologise-winning-Australian-Open.html