MELBOURNE, Australia — Aryna Sabalenka was always going to end up in the final of another Grand Slam.
Thursday night in Melbourne, Sabalenka, the world No. 1, cruised through Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in the Australian Open semifinal, spoiling Svitolina’s quest to boost morale back home with a 6-2, 6-3 win that was as emphatic as it was predictable.
That is no slight on Svitolina, even if she was off her best form in the cool, still air of the Melbourne Park evening. With the win, Sabalenka made her 11th final since last January. That includes five of the last six biggest events in the sport: The Grand Slams and the WTA Tour Finals.
Her patterns in this part of the world have also become familiar. For a second consecutive year, she will head into the Australian final undefeated on the year, having won the lead-up WTA tournament in Brisbane. This is her fourth consecutive Australian Open final; the first three brought two wins and one, devastating loss, last year to Madison Keys.
At the most important events, her familiar efficiency goes back even further. At majors, her first week’s matches often have one close set and another that’s a wipeout. The back end brings a few tighter contests, including some three-setters, but the stumble doesn’t come until the final test.
That’s how it’s been this year in Australia, with a couple of frightening pivots for the two players hoping to put an end to this relentless winning. The match with Svitolina was never in doubt.
Elina Svitolina managed to attack and flip points when she should, but Aryna Sabalenka did not let her get on top of the match. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)
But for a slight stumble early in the second set, when Sabalenka opened with a sloppy game and gave an early service break to Svitolina, this was close to perfect, high-octane tennis. The world No. 1 grabbed the lead by landing 71 percent of her first serves in the first set, a frightening number given how hard she hits the ball and how often she shoots at the lines.
And while that translated into winning just 61 percent of her first-serve points, thanks to some outstanding retrieving from Svitolina and some +1 errors, Sabalenka more than made up for it with what has become maybe the best second serve in the women’s game. She won 75 percent of her second-serve points, an absurdly high number. She kicked the ball out of Svitolina’s strike zone even in the cool conditions, and the Ukrainian’s knowledge that she had to jump on chances to attack whenever she could led to errors from her racket.
But this is mostly finding small details in something that unfolded evenly throughout. Sabalenka spent the match blasting away while mixing in just enough variety to keep her opponent guessing, finishing points at the net to prevent Svitolina from flipping them as she had done in beating Coco Gauff so comprehensively two nights earlier.
On this occasion, Svitolina was unable to find a way into a match, like a rock climber whose fingertips keep slipping out of the small cracks that might provide some stability.
Sabalenka is never flawless. She doesn’t have to be, as long as she accepts the inevitable errors that her game produces.
Sabalenka cruised into a fourth consecutive final in Melbourne. (Izhar Khan / AFP via Getty Images)
That was how the second set went, as she got broken to start it but ended it by winning six of the last seven games. The last point was like so many others. A big serve, a big plus-one forehand down the line into the open court, and a big forehand across the court into the open space, before Svitolina had even barely started to run in that direction.
When it was over, a muted fist pump greeted the result, even though it made her the first woman to reach four consecutive Melbourne finals since Martina Hingis in the 1990s.
“The job is not done yet,” Sablenka said on the court when it was over. No, it is not. She knows that the real test comes Saturday.