Aryna Sabalenka eked out an ugly win in her Wimbledon quarterfinal Tuesday, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4. The top player on the WTA was taken to her limit by an unlikely figure: Laura Siegemund, the 37-year-old veteran known for a confounding style of play that proceeds at a lumbering pace. You might recall Siegemund from a memorable match at the 2023 U.S. Open, where Coco Gauff was openly pleading with the umpire to call time violations on her foe.
On paper, it's difficult to grasp why the WTA's most fearsome and in-form player would struggle with an opponent who was ranked outside the top 100 at the outset of Wimbledon. Sabalenka should be rolling right through players of Siegemund's stature, and she typically does. But Siegemund, still an excellent athlete in the twilight of her career, managed to infuriate Sabalenka by tracking down every single ball and dragging the rallies into the mud. She rattled the No. 1 seed with her arrhythmic mix of chips, slices, and drop shots. Junk, in other words.
If you're a longtime passenger of the Sabalenka roller coaster, you know this is not a one-off experience; her two major finals against Coco Gauff are the most famous variation on this theme. When Sabalenka has to play a great defender who feeds her a bucket of low-pace balls, and the stakes of the match are high, she can spew errors. She gets nervy and decelerates her swing. Her grunts get louder and louder, but the balls careen into the net or 10 feet out, or land haplessly at the service line. Power defines her game, but when faced with its opposite, she can flounder.
Sabalenka needs to address the issue, and should consider my modest proposal. You know where to find and practice against an opponent who plays maddeningly good junk ball? Get to the nearest local tennis club and locate a player of at least 70, who learned to hit every single shot with the continental grip and finds topspin repulsive. Look for the one who can slice and dice younger players without ever accelerating past a gentle trot. Verify that this person is wearing high white tube socks. Hire this person, who probably has a great deal of free time, to travel on the tour as a hitting partner. If court coverage is an issue, simply acquire three to four of these elderly hitting partners and assemble them on the court in the desired configuration. Buy them all matching windbreakers.
Sabalenka can definitely afford to do this; she led the tour in prize money last year. These days, she almost never loses to a fellow powerful baseliner. But until she can punish a junk-baller's underspun tricks, she should be training against a group of geriatric samurai.
