Aryna Sabalenka and Zheng Qingwen will play in the Australian Open final

Aryna Sabalenka, who won the tournament last year, will face off against Zheng Qingwen in the final women’s singles match at the Australian Open. This became clear after the Belarusian beat US Open champion American Coco Gauff in two sets, and the Chinese tennis player, who became the first representative of her country in the finals of a major in the last ten years, defeated the Ukrainian Dayana Yastremska.

Of the two women’s semi-finals held in Melbourne on Thursday, the main one, of course, was match between Arina Sabalenka and Coco Gauff. After all, these tennis players before the start of the tournament were among the four main contenders for the title, which together with them were the losers of the top half of the bracket – the first racket of the world Iga Swiatek and last year’s finalist Elena Rybakina.

The Belarusian and American met for the first time since Gauff won in three games in the US Open final. Then in New York, Sabalenka very confidently won the first set, but then, not without the help of fans who ardently supported her opponent, she lost her advantage. Now the public was more neutral, and everything turned out much more successfully for the Belarusian.

She again failed to avoid changes in the game, but aggressive tennis on the back line, Sabalenka’s main weapon, generally worked steadily, failing in not the most important plays, and in this case it was enough to beat the stubborn Gauff.

The progress that the American has made over the past year is evidenced by the fact that, although inferior to the Belarusian in height by 8 cm, she, albeit slightly, by 4 km/h, still surpasses her in the average speed of the first serve. True, in tennis, especially women’s, where success largely depends on high-quality technique, such an advantage is not always decisive. At first, Sabalenka confidently handled Gauff’s serve, and by the middle of the first game her advantage looked very large. However, losing 2:5, the American took several equal games. Gauff even served for the set herself, but did it unsuccessfully. As a result, Sabalenka played a great tiebreaker, and in the second set she took advantage of the fact that her opponent wavered with the score 4:4 and soon finished the match – 7:6 (7:2), 6:4.

Another semi-final, between the Chinese Zheng Qingwen and the Ukrainian Dayana Yastremska, lasted exactly the same – 1 hour 42 minutes. Here the advantage of the tennis player ranked higher was noticeable, although at the end of the second set Zheng Qingwen, sensing the importance of the moment, began to make mistakes, and Yastremskaya had a chance to catch on. In the end – 6:4, 6:4, but the loser, who started the tournament with qualifications and was only in 93rd place in the ranking, can hardly be upset by the final result – reaching the semi-finals and soaring into the top thirty. Yastremskaya’s five victories over top-50 opponents over the past two weeks prove that he is no fluke and more may soon follow.

The balance of power in the final is, in general, obvious. Although she is a fairly skilled tennis player, Zheng Qingwen does not have the playing qualities that could confuse such a powerful opponent as Sabalenka.

The Chinese woman has a very decent backhand, but on the right, as a rule, she does not send the ball so hard, and in shootouts with the Belarusian this is fraught with unpleasant consequences. This, by the way, is evidenced by the result of their only match with each other – the quarterfinals of last year’s US Open, in which Zheng Qingwen took only five games. That is, it cannot yet be said that an insurmountable Chinese wall has risen in front of Sabalenka. Rather, it is simply a barrier that she can overcome relatively easily.

All this, however, does not negate the fact that for the 21-year-old tennis player, who hails from the eastern Chinese province of Hubei, in the capital of which, the city of Wuhan, a major tournament of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) category 1000 is held, reaching the final of the Australian Open is currently moment is simply a fabulous achievement. Moreover, Zheng Qingwen achieved it exactly ten years after her famous compatriot Li Na won her second and so far last Chinese victory at the Grand Slam tournaments in Melbourne.

On the eve of this final, another historical parallel can be seen: in 2013, another Belarusian tennis player, Victoria Azarenka, also defended her Australian title in a match against a Chinese woman, the same Li Na, and did it successfully.

Evgeniy Fedyakov