While she had never lost a match in the Wuhan stadium, where she had fifteen victories in a row, Aryna Sabalenka believed that the good series was going to come to an end this Saturday. But, led 6-1, 4-2 by the American Coco Gauff, she managed to reverse the trend to win 1-6, 6-4, 6-4, in 2h26.
What a contrast, for Sabalenka, between her quarter-final the day before against the Polish Magdalena Frech (6-2, 6-2), during which she had already hit fourteen winning shots after only four games, and her semi-final against Coco Gauff, who led 5-0 after 19 minutes!
Completely overwhelmed, the Belarusian had still not managed to obtain the slightest game ball and she came up against the entire arsenal of Gauff, particularly strong on the forehand side, which is not always the case. After only 28 minutes of play, the American, world No. 4, was leading a set to nothing (6-1) against a frustrated and helpless opponent.
The second set began with five breaks, the American releasing her grip a little and committing a double fault twice to return, at 1-0 then at 2-1, the service games she had just stolen from Sabalenka. But there were clearly details that were going wrong in the American’s mechanics. Mainly on his gesture of service, which was going to begin to betray her in an unreasonable way. She went so far as to lead 4-2 but could not resist her drop in level, combined with the grinta of Sabalenka, who constantly worked to put even more intensity on all her strikes.
