The biggest before-and-after moment in Aryna Sabalenka’s life came five years ago, when her father, Sergey, died suddenly of meningitis at 43. She was 21 at the time. There’s another moment, far less weighty, that changed the trajectory of Sabalenka’s tennis life.
It happened outside a stadium in the Canadian city of Toronto in August 2022, after a three-set loss to Coco Gauff in the round of 16 at the National Bank Open.
Sabalenka served 18 double faults that day. Her matches had become tennis car accidents. Her serve was gone. Sitting on the ground in Canada and crying, Sabalenka had reached breaking point. She had tried everything, she told her two main coaches, Jason Stacy and Anton Dubrov. Nothing had worked.
That’s when Stacy, a high-performance expert with a background in mixed martial arts, laid into her. He asked her to raze her serve so she could rebuild it. Sabalenka didn’t hesitate. OK, she told him, let’s do it.
Here’s how she turned things around.
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Aryna Sabalenka’s team: Serve mechanics, TikTok dances, and a phonecall