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Aryna Sabalenka had to make quite a few adjustments to her serve to win her first Grand Slam title at the 2023 Australian Open. Former American player Mary Joe Fernandez recently praised the 24-year-old for successfully rectifying her serve after struggling with it last year.
The Belarusian defeated 2022 Wimbledon winner Elena Rybakina 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the final of the Melbourne Major. Although Sabalenka started the match with a double fault, she did well to recover and finished the match with 17 aces and just seven double faults. In 2022, she committed 428 double faults in her 55 tour matches at an average of 7.78 per match.
Speaking on the Holding Court with Patrick McEnroe podcast recently, former World No. 4 Fernandez stated that many top women's players in have failed to overcome their flawed serve like Sabalenka.
"It's super impressive. When I think back at all the players that had the yips on the women's side, I don't think of anyone that came out of it or ever really got back to being really good," Fernandez said. "Whether it was Gabriela Sabatini, Elena Dementieva, or Ana Ivanovic, they never quite got it back. You are always in the back of your mind thinking, 'Oh, when are the double faults going to show up'."
Fernandez added that the World No.2 player's "complete turnaround" could produce great rivalries with Kazakh star Rybakina and World No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the future.
"Not only are her double faults less now, but now she's acing the women more. So she really did a 360, it was a complete turnaround for her. I was really happy to see it because I feel like she works really hard and she wants it so badly. I'm excited because I feel like now, we're going to have maybe a good rivalry with Rybakina, who also was very impressive, and maybe against Iga Swiatek," she added.
"There was a lot of wrong motion on my serve from the biomechanic side" - Aryna Sabalenka
During a press conference at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Aryna Sabalenka revealed that she saw videos of herself and detected the issue in motion while serving. The Belarusian made the required changes that yielded positive results.
"I was struggling a lot. It was biomechanic, then it was mentally. I just watched a lot of videos of my serve. I understood that there was a lot of wrong motion on my serve from the biomechanic side. I could not put the serve in. So I just changed the motion a lot. I just change it," Aryna Sabalenka said.
Sabalenka, the second seed in Dubai's WTA 1000 tournament, received a bye in the first round and will face America's Lauren Davis in the second round tomorrow, February 21.
