Tennis
French Open
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ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — Aryna Sabalenka made no effort to hide her disappointment after losing the French Open final to Coco Gauff on Saturday, repeatedly calling her own performance “terrible” and saying it was “the worst tennis I’ve played in the last, I don’t know how many months.”
“It’s just a joke,” she said.
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She offered that analysis once she’d left Court Philippe-Chatrier, after a 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4 defeat. In her on-court interview, Sabalenka eschewed the usual platitudes and the customary opening line congratulating the winner and their team, and went straight for self-flagellation. After fighting back tears, she said, “Honestly, guys, this will hurt so much, especially after such a tough two weeks, playing great tennis and in these terrible conditions playing such terrible tennis in the final — that really hurts.”
“Coco, congrats in these tough conditions. You were the better player than me. Congrats on a great two weeks,” she said.
In her news conference, Sabalenka went for the jugular again. This time, she focused not on her own shortcomings, but on the weather conditions that had defined the type of tennis being played.
“Conditions were terrible, and she simply was better in these conditions than me. I think it was the worst final I ever played.”
Sabalenka’s devastation was understandable. She is the world No. 1 and has lost two Grand Slam finals in a row, both in three sets, both having been the big favorite. Five months ago, Madison Keys beat her in Melbourne to win her first major, and in Paris, Gauff thwarted Sabalenka’s bid for the non-hard-court slam that would rubberstamp her evolution into an all-court player.
The match was on her racket, but Sabalenka hit 70 unforced errors compared to just 37 winners as she struggled to cope with the factors outside of her control. Namely, the wind, an inspired Gauff and the pressure of what was at stake.
Given the chance to praise Gauff’s inspired defensive showing, Sabalenka said her opponent had won the match “by running and playing those high balls from the frame,” before saying directly that Gauff had framed, or mishit, numerous shots.
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“She was hitting the ball from the frame. Somehow, magically, the ball lands in the court. It felt like a joke, like somebody from above was just staying there laughing, like, ‘Let’s see if you can handle this.’
“She won the match not because she played incredible, just because I made all of those mistakes, from if you look from the outside, from easy balls.”
Tennis is seen as a 50-50 battle, but matchups and game styles mean that this is not always the case. Gauff won Saturday’s final by assuming the role of supporting actor to Sabalenka, the protagonist, knowing that the match was not on her racket and making her greatest assets — her court coverage, lateral movement, and baseline defense — the most important things in the match.
She played the conditions. Sabalenka did not, saying afterwards that as the match wore on and it got windier, she became “overemotional.” She compared her unraveling to the last time she played Gauff in a Grand Slam final, at the U.S. Open two years ago. “Another terrible performance from me against Coco in the final,” she said.
Sabalenka added that had the four-time champion Iga Świątek beaten her in Thursday’s semifinal, “I think she would go out today and she would get the win.”
In her news conference, Gauff responded. “I mean, I don’t agree with that. I’m here sitting here,” she said.
“Last time I played — no shade to Iga or anything, but I played her and I won in straight sets. Yeah, I don’t think that’s a fair thing to say, because anything can really happen.”
This leaves Sabalenka in a strange place. She remains world No. 1 by a distance, but she hasn’t won a Grand Slam title this year and has been way below her best level in both finals. Throughout the match, she seemed uncomfortable with the momentum swings and the uncomfortable conditions. But a similar shift happened against Świątek: in both matches, Sabalenka led 4-1, had a point for 5-1, and was pulled back into a tiebreak, one under the roof and one in the open air. Against Świątek under the roof, Sabalenka reset, one less intangible to fight. Against Gauff, the collection of intangibles — the weather, the stakes, the history — appeared to overwhelm her.
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And for regular watchers of her matches, her reaction to Saturday’s defeat was essentially an extension of how she reacts to smaller moments of disappointment within matches: berating herself and not accepting that occasionally her opponents will be too good. This kind of mentality is part of what drives great champions. But is showing it always helpful?
Her performance coach, Jason Stacy, was asked this question in a news conference Friday and pointed to one of the team’s mantras: “Don’t fight it, don’t feed it.”
He expanded by saying, “We don’t want to fight this, because the stress, anxiety, the pressure, the mistakes, all those things are going to be there, so you can’t pretend it’s not going to be a thing, but you don’t want to feed it either and give it too much energy or power.”
Asked if Sabalenka’s frustrations were a boost, Gauff said that she didn’t read too much into it, but, “Obviously when you see your opponent frustrated in any circumstance, if it’s tough or not, obviously it does uplift you just because you know that they’re frustrated.”
Sabalenka will head to the Greek island of Mykonos to recharge and, in her words, indulge in “tequila, gummy bears, and swimming.” She laughed as she said that she would be “like the tourist for a couple of days.” But even as she tried to lighten the mood and look ahead to her holiday, she couldn’t help but go back to lambasting the events of the previous few hours.
“I just need (a) couple of days to completely forget about this crazy world and this crazy — if I could swear, I would swear right now, about this crazy thing that happened today,” she said. “I think everyone understands. I’m just trying to be very polite right now, but there is no other word that could describe what just happened today on the court.”
All things being equal, Sabalenka is undoubtedly the best player in the world. But tennis matches are not equal. How she manages the intangibles that can shape them will define the next phase of her career.
(Top photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images)
Charlie Eccleshare is a tennis writer for The Athletic, having previously covered soccer as the Tottenham Hotspur correspondent for five years. He joined in 2019 after five years writing about football and tennis at The Telegraph. Follow Charlie on Twitter @CDEccleshare
