Aryna Sabalenka Faces Unique Challenge at US Open
Aryna Sabalenka had seen just about everything in New York. She had not, until Friday night, had to play through a cloud of cannabis.
Three games into her US Open third-round match, already up 3-0 on Kamilla Rakhimova and cruising, the two-time defending champion stopped, walked towards chair umpire Eva Asderaki-Moore and, smiling, made her point.
“Someone is smoking weed, do you mind … because it’s so strong,” she said, half-laughing, half-exasperated.
The exchange drew chuckles in the stadium, but Sabalenka’s irritation was real. After wrapping up a 6-3, 6-4 win and a place in the last 16, she explained it in her own way.
“I was, like, Guys, you can do whatever, you can smoke whatever, you can relax as much as you can, but please, do not do it around the tennis courts,” she said. “It’s a bit tricky to handle that smell while you’re trying to compete at your best.”
In New York, the smell is almost part of the backdrop. Cannabis is legal, and the sweet, heavy scent hangs in the air around the grounds and across the city. Players have talked about it at this tournament for years. Sabalenka has been coming here long enough to know that.
This time, though, it hit differently.
“That strong, yeah,” she said. “Also, because it was a bit windy. I don’t know if it was, like, coming from the crowd or was from the outside because the wind blows it into the stadium. I don’t know. I just hope they’re going to be a bit more aware of that stuff.”
If the conditions were hazy, her tennis was anything but. Sabalenka reached the round of 16 without dropping a set, built on a dominant serving display: 10 aces, not a single break point faced. Rakhimova pushed, asked questions, tried to extend rallies. The Belarusian shut the door every time it creaked open.
It matters. Sabalenka arrived in New York carrying something unfamiliar: doubt. She has not reached a final since her blistering March sweep of Indian Wells and Miami, a run that seemed to confirm her status as the sport’s standard-bearer. Since then, the results have sagged, the certainty has blurred.
The ranking table is about to reflect that reality. Sabalenka will lose the No 1 spot she has held for 97 weeks unless she wins a third straight US Open title and Elena Rybakina falls before the semi-finals. The equation is brutal, the margins thin.
On court, she looks like a player intent on fighting it. Off court, the strain is starting to leak out.
After her emphatic second-round win over Polina Iatcenko, Sabalenka’s press conference turned combative when a reporter framed her week before the tournament as “parties and fun”. It was the second time in this event that someone had hinted her pre-Open commitments were more glamour than grind.
She snapped.
“You guys are, like, a joke,” she shot back. “‘Parties, fun …’ like, why would you even say that? Why would you even think about that? What kind of question is that? Just because I posted, like, some activities with brands, and you think that I’ve been partying, not training?”
The exchange dragged on, tense and uncomfortable, until Sabalenka cut it off with a final rebuke: “Think before you say stuff.”
On the court, her answers have been cleaner. The serve is landing, the forehand is biting again, the movement looks lighter. She is not yet at the snarling, unstoppable peak that tore through the hard-court swing in March, but the rhythm is returning.
Now comes a different kind of test.
In the fourth round she faces Taylor Townsend, a home favourite with a booming lefty game and a crowd that adores her. Townsend backed up last year’s run to the second week with another surge, beating 15th seed Diana Shnaider 6-2, 6-7 (3), 6-3 to return to the last 16. The American’s variety and net instincts can drag opponents out of their patterns; Sabalenka will need the same serving clarity and a cool head in a noisier, more partisan atmosphere.
Other Champions Finding Their Range
Sabalenka is not the only former champion finding her range again in New York.
Daniil Medvedev, the 2021 men’s champion, put together the kind of routine, ruthless performance that once defined his hard-court dominance. He dismissed 29th seed Arthur Rinderknecht 6-4, 6-4, 6-4, a straight-sets win that never truly felt in doubt. The scoreline was tidy, the message clearer: he is playing his way back into the conversation.
Carlos Alcaraz, the defending men’s champion, is doing something even more delicate: rebuilding a season on the fly. The Spaniard had not played since injuring his right wrist at the start of April, a four-and-a-half month layoff that threatened to derail his year. He has used this US Open as both comeback and statement.
Against Wu Yibing, he looked like a man accelerating through the gears. A 6-3, 6-4, 6-1 win took him into the fourth round, but the match was not as straightforward as the score suggests. In the first two sets, Wu forced him to think, to improvise, to hold his nerve in tight games. Alcaraz did what champions do: he raised his level exactly when the scoreboard demanded it.
“To be honest, I’m better than I thought,” he admitted afterwards. “Physically, I thought I was going to be bad after the first match but I’m recovering really well, I’m doing great things off the court to be in a good shape and right now I think my level is good. I’ve got the rhythm of the competition. Every time I step on to the court, I give it my all.”
Next up for Alcaraz is 20th seed Tommy Paul, an American who dragged himself through a five-set scrap with 15th seed Alexander Bublik, 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (4), 6-1, 6-3. Paul will bring speed, counterpunching and a raucous home crowd. Alcaraz will bring the aura of a defending champion rediscovering his edge.
New York, as always, supplies the noise: the smells drifting in on the wind, the late-night questions in cramped interview rooms, the roars that swell for the home players and the jeers that occasionally greet the villains of the draw.
Sabalenka has planted herself right in the middle of it again. The serve is back, the fire is obvious, the stakes are huge. Whether she leaves with her third straight title and that No 1 ranking intact will depend on how she handles not just the opponents across the net, but everything swirling around her in this restless city.
