Russian-language final – Newspaper Kommersant No. 15 (7460) of 01/27/2023

On Saturday, last year’s Wimbledon champion Yelena Rybakina from Kazakhstan and world No. 5 Belarusian Arina Sobolenko will compete for the Australian Open title. This became clear after Rybakina outplayed two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, another representative of Belarus, in similarly scripted semi-finals, each of which consisted of two games, and Sobolenko coped with Magda Lynette from Poland.

In terms of the composition of the participants, the main women’s match of this Australian Open turned out to be conditionally predictable. Arina Sobolenko in the lists of tournament favorites, according to most bookmakers, was in second place after the leader of the world ranking Iga Shventek, and Elena Rybakina, although she was not included in the top 5 there, was considered a classic dark horse, from which one could expect surprises any scale. Based on the physical data, the power of the serve and the density of blows on the back line, then these athletic and spectacular girls in their own way deserve to have two or three titles at the Grand Slam championships already. Especially 24-year-old Sobolenko, who has been in the top ten for the fourth consecutive season. However, in her case, the nuances of female psychology still affect, and Rybakina, who is a year younger, did not immediately reveal her potential. In any case, her triumph at Wimbledon last year was certainly a sensation.

Rybakina’s rival in the semi-finals was another much more deserved Belarusian Victoria Azarenka compared to Sobolenko. Her entry into the final of this Australian Open, of course, could be the brightest plot of the entire tournament. Indeed, ten years after his second Melbourne triumph, the ex-first racket of the world, who has been raising her son alone for six years, has experienced many sharp turns in her life. The question was that her victory over Rybakina would be contrary to the very logic of the development of tennis.

Even while maintaining an excellent shape for her 33 years, it is already extremely difficult for one of the strongest representatives of her generation to fight with younger rivals who do not experience any complexes in front of her and surpass her in the power of hitting the ball – the very component in which Azarenka was once surpassed it was extremely difficult.

Rybakina, who in the third round not without difficulty passed the American Danielle Collins, dealt with Shventek in the 1/8 finals, and in the quarterfinals with Elena Ostapenko from Riga, had a far from ideal semi-final. But the more valuable her victory. In the second half of the first game there was a segment when she completely lost the first serve, and it is not surprising that Azarenka, who was inferior 3:5, managed to turn the end of the set into a tie-break. However, there the more experienced of the rivals suddenly got nervous, and, starting with the score 2:2, the representative of Kazakhstan went into the gap. The second batch went faster. Although Rybakina did not apply for the match with the score 5:2, the exhausted Azarenka could not drag out the ending.

The confrontation between Arina Sobolenko and 30-year-old Magda Linett, who, having not previously reached the fourth round in the majors, managed to surpass her compatriot Shventek according to the results of the current tournament, turned out to be very similar to the first semi-final. Here, too, youth was far from sinless, and the tie-break of the first game turned out to be the key, which in many respects inclined the experience to capitulation. Tennis Lynette, who gives the ball good speed with her biting shots and can effectively change the direction of attacks, looked very attractive, but Sobolenko’s trump cards, who managed, despite this, to crush her opponent with power, turned out to be stronger. On 33 points won by her knockout shots, Lynette was able to respond with only nine. And the pitch, which in past years often prevented Sobolenko from taking another step forward, this time did not let her down.

Saturday’s meeting promises to be extremely interesting. The finalists play similar, most aggressive tennis, besides, they are almost the same height and are not much inferior to each other in terms of movement around the court.

From the point of view of psychology, the course of the struggle in this case is also extremely difficult to predict. In theory, Sobolenko, who has won nine matches in a row this year without losing a single set, looks a little more stable. And the score of personal meetings in her favor is 3:0. However, the decisive match of the Grand Slam tournament is always a special story, besides, Rybakina already has a victory at last year’s Wimbledon, where she lost the first set to the Tunisian Uns Jabir in the final. And the experience of such triumphs, especially such difficult ones, is very expensive.

Evgeny Fedyakov