title at the Brisbane International.<\/a><\/p>\nShe hasn\u2019t dropped a set en route to the final, her fourth in succession at the Australian Open, and nor has Rybakina. That hasn\u2019t happened at a Grand Slam since 2008.<\/p>\n
Another pertinent stat: The same two players appearing in the season-ending championship final one year and the final of the season-opening major the next hasn\u2019t happened since 1999-2000.<\/p>\n
Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport were involved in that. Hingis\u2019 name is prominent this weekend, because she\u2019s the last woman to reach four or more consecutive finals in Australia. The only other, in the Open era, was Evonne Goolagong Cawley. <\/p>\n
Don\u2019t mention rematch<\/p>\n
The win in 2023 was Sabalenka\u2019s Grand Slam breakthrough, fulfilling the tremendous promise she\u2019d shown but that, until then, was hampered by nerves and inconsistency with her serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to like on that final, because me and her, we both are different players,\u201d Sabalenka said. \u201cWe went through different things. We\u2019re much stronger mentally and physically, and we\u2019re playing better tennis now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll approach this as completely different match, and we have long history after that final. So I\u2019ll approach this match as the very first one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybakina\u2019s return<\/p>\n
Rybakina, who was born in Moscow but represents Kazakhstan, will take a similar approach after advancing this time with a semifinal win over Jessica Pegula, conceding she got tight at the end when she was broken twice while serving for the match and took almost a half-hour between her first and winning match points.<\/p>\n
Three years ago, the 2022 Wimbledon champion went into the Australian final as the only Grand Slam winner in the match. She took the first set before going down 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\n
This will be her first major final since then. Rybakina had only advanced past the quarterfinals at the Slams once more \u2014 at Wimbledon in 2024 \u2014 before arriving in Australia as the reigning WTA Finals champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, (2023 final) we played here, it was very close. I think I throughout the match of course I had some little opportunities, but in the end of this third set, I think Aryna stepped in. She served much better. Yeah, she deserved that win,\u201d Rybakina said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo of course many years passed, a lot of matches has been played. Hopefully with all the experience which I got from this last match, last time final I played here, I can bring it to Saturday\u2019s match.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, fight till the end, and hopefully this time it\u2019s going to go my way.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 When Aryna Sabalenka is really deeply contemplating her Australian Open final rematch with Elena…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":554991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[32349,2477,38341,101585,2210,2766,73390,243035,22298,21487,68133,23024,243034,18929,235115,62,1464,67,132,68,14375,1707],"class_list":{"0":"post-554990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-amanda-anisimova","9":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","10":"tag-australian-open","11":"tag-australian-open-tennis-championships","12":"tag-coco-gauff","13":"tag-elena-rybakina","14":"tag-elina-svitolina","15":"tag-evonne-goolagong-cawley","16":"tag-iga-swiatek","17":"tag-jessica-pegula","18":"tag-lindsay-davenport","19":"tag-madison-keys","20":"tag-martina-hingis","21":"tag-melbourne","22":"tag-send-to-apple-news","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-tennis","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-unitedstates","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-womens-tennis","29":"tag-womens-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115986664289735403","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}