Sabalenka’s Mental Reset: Can It Power a US Open Three-Peat?

The Aryna Sabalenka mental reset has become the real story of her US Open campaign — not her ranking, not her draw, but whether the work she keeps referencing in press conferences actually holds up over two weeks. She walked into Flushing Meadows this year carrying something she hasn’t had to deal with much in recent seasons: real doubt. Not from her opponents. From everywhere else.

A Season That Nearly Got Away From Her

The year started about as well as a season can start. Sabalenka reached the Australian Open final, then ran off back-to-back hard-court titles at Indian Wells and Miami to complete the Sunshine Double — a feat only four other women in history have managed. At that point, a third consecutive US Open title looked less like a question and more like a formality.

Then it fell apart, fast. A quarterfinal exit at the French Open. A fourth-round loss to Naomi Osaka at Wimbledon, after which Sabalenka’s public comments veered from frustrated to something closer to despondent — at one point saying she wanted to “quit tennis right now” and, in a separate moment, admitting she just wanted to “go, get completely drunk, forget about tennis, and try to get in better shape.” Then came the North American hard-court swing that was supposed to be her reset: a fourth-round exit in Toronto to Ekaterina Alexandrova, followed by an even more alarming collapse in Cincinnati, where she blew a 5-1 first-set tiebreak lead and a 4-1 second-set lead to lose to 20-year-old Sara Bejlek, a player ranked well outside the top 50.

By the time the tour reporters started asking whether the world No. 1 had “mentally checked out,” it wasn’t an unreasonable question. It was the obvious one.

“Maybe There’s Something Wrong With People”

What’s been most striking about Sabalenka’s response to all of this isn’t panic — it’s defiance, delivered with the same edge that’s defined her career. Asked directly what was wrong with her game heading into New York, she didn’t offer an explanation. She offered a redirection: “Maybe there’s something wrong with people.” Pressed on the black mesh outfit drawing commentary on social media, her answer was similarly unbothered: “Who cares about people, right? All that matters for me is that I love it.”

But beneath the bravado, she’s been unusually candid about the actual work. “It wasn’t the best period. I don’t want to defend myself, but obviously I just don’t want to talk about that period. I’ve been dealing with several things,” she said. “But who cares, right? I didn’t perform my best. These tough lessons are definitely going to make me way, way stronger and working even harder. I work on my mental side of the game.”

That’s the throughline worth watching this fortnight — not just whether Sabalenka wins matches, but whether the mental-side work she keeps referencing actually shows up when it matters.

The Sabalenka Mental Reset Begins in New York

So far, the early signs are good, even if they came with some familiar wobbles. Sabalenka opened her title defense with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Camila Osorio — her 24th consecutive Grand Slam first-round win, a streak dating back five years — but it wasn’t clean. She dropped the opening game, then let a comfortable second-set lead slip as Osorio clawed back to 4-4 before Sabalenka closed it out. It’s a pattern that’s shown up all year: real quality mixed with lapses in concentration at exactly the moments a top seed usually shuts the door.

Round two brings Polina Iatcenko, a 22-year-old qualifier playing just her second tour-level main draw, who needed three hours and twenty-seven minutes and four match points saved to get past Renata Zarazua in the first round. On paper it’s a match Sabalenka should win comfortably. The more relevant question, given everything that’s preceded it, is whether she can win it without the kind of mid-match wavering that’s derailed her against lower-ranked players all season.

The Blueprint That Already Worked Once

There’s real precedent here for a Sabalenka turnaround built specifically on mental recalibration, which is part of why this year’s version of the story carries some credibility. After losing the 2025 Australian Open and French Open finals, she described a genuine crisis point: “After the Australian Open, I thought that the right way would be just to forget it and move on, but then the same thing happened at the French Open. So after the French Open I figured that, ‘Okay, maybe it’s time for me to sit back and to look at those finals and to maybe learn something.'” A holiday reading the neurosurgeon James Doty’s self-help memoir Into the Magic Shop became, in her telling, a turning point — and she went on to beat Amanda Anisimova in that year’s US Open final for her second straight title in New York, crediting the “controlled” approach directly.

This year’s version of the story is messier — a full season of instability rather than two finals losses — but the mechanism she’s describing is the same: setbacks treated as material to work with rather than results to bury.

What’s at Stake Beyond the Trophy

There’s real pressure underneath all of this beyond the three-peat bid itself. Sabalenka’s grip on the world No. 1 ranking has loosened through the year’s inconsistency, with Elena Rybakina in position to overtake her depending on how deep both run in New York. A third straight US Open title would make Sabalenka the first woman to three-peat at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams’s run from 2012 to 2014 — a genuinely historic marker that would go a long way toward settling the “mentally checked out” question for good.

For now, the story remains open. Sabalenka has given herself the matches to write a redemption arc identical in shape to last year’s — rock bottom, a mental reset, a trophy. Whether the next two weeks confirm that arc or complicate it further is, at this point, the most interesting subplot of the women’s draw.

Who do you think is more likely to hold the No. 1 ranking by the final — Sabalenka or Rybakina?