US OPEN CHAMPION Aryna Sabalenka EXCLUSIVE: Transforming Doubt, Pressure & Loss into HUGE Success

When a Trophy Feels Like a First

There are moments of victory that arrive like a lightning strike, sudden and blinding, and there are those that feel like a homecoming. For Irina Sabalenka, the second straight US Open title landed somewhere between those poles: a relief after a year of close calls, and a testament to a slow, granular reshaping of confidence. In conversation she describes the experience not as an exhale but as evidence — proof that lessons taken from loss can be forged into a steadier, more controlled self.

The stubbornness of practice and the silence after a defeat

Her path this season read like a study in near-misses: two Grand Slam finals lost earlier in the year, each a raw lesson in stamina and temperament. The pain of losing, she explains, is different when the finish line is visible. It lingers. Her instinct has been to leave the arena quickly and to let others — coaches, analysts — perform the cold, technical breakdown of a match. Watching herself lose, she admits, would be like pressing on a wound. So she delegates the visual autopsy to her team and reserves her emotional energy for the long work of recovery.

That choice — to avoid replaying the most painful moments — reads less like avoidance and more like a preservation tactic. It’s a practical mental health strategy for someone whose profession requires cycling between intensity and clarity on a daily basis.

Inside the two-week crucible of a Grand Slam

Winning a major is not simply about a single match; it’s about compressing months of training, off-court responsibilities, sponsorship dinners, and media into two relentless weeks. Sabalenka describes a constant inner conversation — honest, anxious, and sometimes absurd — reminding her that she is capable and prepared. That narrative is not engineered to banish nerves but to contain them, to accept them as part of the territory.

• Preparation is physical and logistical: gym work, mobility, and practice hits.
• Preparation is social: dinners, interviews, and relationship maintenance with a team that must sustain them all.
• Preparation is internal: a permission to feel nervous, partnered with a commitment to perform anyway.

When coaching becomes stewardship

Sabalenka has worked with a sports psychologist and experimented with meditation, yet eventually chose to step away from relying on someone else to regulate her mental life. That step is revealing: the transition from learner to leader, from student of psychology to its primary practitioner. She credits that move with helping her take responsibility for emotional responses during matches, a change that coincided with concrete technical improvements and deeper resilience.

That arc — learn, internalize, and then self-coach — is understated in most athlete narratives but it matters. The ability to translate guidance into daily habit is what differentiates glimpses of brilliance from sustainable dominance.

Private grief, public triumph

Perhaps the most intimate portion of the conversation centers on loss. Sabalenka lost her father unexpectedly, a wrenching moment that would have unmoored anyone. Instead of letting grief flatten her, she channeled it into a kind of quiet insistence: honor his memory by pressing forward. She explains that training became a refuge, a place where repetition drowned thought and allowed motion to be felt without being haunted.

Her recollection of his influence — a warm, comedic presence who modeled positivity — reveals the human backbone beneath elite performance. That loss refined her sense of responsibility to family and team, reframing competition not as a solitary clash but as a shared mission.

Rituals, style, and the small things that hold a day

There is practical magic in little routines. Sabalenka keeps the same breakfast during tournaments — avocado toast with two fried eggs and smoked salmon — and admits to game-day superstitions like favoring balls from a particular ballkid after she wins a point. Fashion, too, matters: clothes are more than vanity; they are a medium for self-expression and a way to bring personality into a public arena.

These rituals, mundane to an outsider, function as anchors. They are portable familiarity in a schedule of shifting time zones and arenas.

Team first, but a solo moment at net

Tennis is a team sport masquerading as an individual one. Sabalenka is emphatic about the people who orbit her career: coaches, fitness staff, agents, and family. She runs to them after a victory, hugs her boyfriend first, then thanks the team that made the win possible. Yet the final act on court — the drop to your knees, the thirst of breath after a championship point — remains profoundly solitary. The athlete carries both the weight and reward of that paradox.

Lessons worth carrying beyond the court

Her advice to younger athletes is straightforward and unromantic: find what you love, show up, and stick with people who energize you. Success, she defines, as discipline — the willingness to be present on the days you would rather not be. The insight is age-old but often overlooked; it reframes talent as a habit rather than a paintbrush stroke of genius.

There is also a moral pulse to her final wish for the world: that conflict could be solved through conversation, that the default should be to sit, speak, and stay until problems are resolved. It is a simple, humane law that feels consistent with the kindness she hopes her closest ones would use to describe her.

In the end, the story of a champion is never merely about the trophy on the mantle. It is about the hours of repetition that prepared the hands to hold it, the rituals that steadied a trembling mind, and the memory of those who taught the meaning of persistence. Sabalenka’s victory reads as both an endpoint and a new demanding beginning: proof that loss can instruct, that grief can fuel, and that celebration is itself an act of courage.