Though she has been accused of trying to apologize her way out of her peccadilloes, to spend time with Sabalenka is to experience the chasm between player and person. Off-court, she is light, relaxed, and self-deprecating, unguarded and reflective. It makes sense that once the match is over, this version of her might look with some measure of penitence at the other. \u201cYou have to accept that you\u2019ve been wrong,\u201d she says, then laughs. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve been wrong so many times.\u201d But she pushes back against the idea that a fiery temper is definitionally bad. In fact, she believes in it. \u201cWhen I was young, I would get emotional, and then I would get really pissed with myself for getting emotional. Now I understand that it\u2019s okay to throw the racket. It\u2019s okay to yell something. It\u2019s okay to go nuts if you feel like you\u2019re holding too much in. Sometimes you just need to let it go, to empty it so you\u2019re ready to start over and play the match. Yeah, sometimes it looks ugly and terrible, but I need it in order to keep my head in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabalenka\u2019s tremendous popularity suggests that fans agree with her that the ugly and terrible can make for thrilling tennis. She trails only Gauff in earnings from brand endorsements, with sponsorships that include Nike, the watchmaker Audemars Piguet, and, as of this January, Gucci. The venerable Italian house chooses its brand ambassadors carefully; in tennis, that has meant only Sabalenka and the men\u2019s number one, Jannik Sinner. In March, she was part of an especially interesting front row at Gucci\u2019s Milan Fashion Week show that included Shawn Mendes, Romeo Beckham, Donatella Versace, and the boyish Formula 1 driver Kimi Antonelli. She has twice as many Instagram followers as any other active female tennis pro. Intensity, authenticity, humor, glamour\u2014Sabalenka\u2019s off-court success proves that these are as valuable as a great first serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople know when you\u2019re being authentic, being your true self,\u201d says Frangulis, her fianc\u00e9. \u201cThere\u2019s always going to be something tricky in a match, because Aryna\u2019s going to say what she feels. And she\u2019s going to do the same on Instagram and TikTok. That makes her special. But I\u2019ve always told her that to stay composed, she has to try to attach herself to the facts, to what is actually happening, and not to what\u2019s coming to her mind. And the fact is that she\u2019s the best in the game, and she can always handle it, always jump back and get it done. It\u2019s not about erasing those emotions. It\u2019s about using them in her favor\u2014making it one of her superpowers instead of her kryptonite.\u201d<\/p>\n
Big personalities have big admirers and big detractors, and Sabalenka is aware that she is not everyone\u2019s favorite flavor. That\u2019s okay. \u201cWith a lot of love and a lot of attention and a lot of success, there\u2019s always gonna be people who judge you,\u201d she says. \u201cThey judge your look, they judge your grunting, your nationality, even your private life, your choices. I don\u2019t scroll a lot, but sometimes I\u2019ll see random comments on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and I\u2019ll ask my manager, \u2018Do people really hate me that much?\u2019 Then I go into the stadium and I feel so much support, and I realize that on the internet, it\u2019s so few people, but it\u2019s so loud. Sometimes it\u2019s a fake account, and I think, You don\u2019t even have the balls to show your face? Or sometimes you click on the profile, and you see it\u2019s a mother with three kids, a happy family living a very conventional, perfect life. And the stuff that she\u2019s messaging you, it\u2019s \u2018I want you to die, I want your family to have cancer, you\u2019re a whore.\u2019 And I think: There\u2019s something wrong with this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though she has been accused of trying to apologize her way out of her peccadilloes, to spend time…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":805232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[327768,327767,4180,8935,60107,62,327769,1464,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-805231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-_paywall-sample-for-14-days","9":"tag-functional-tags","10":"tag-magazine","11":"tag-onecolumn","12":"tag-splitscreenimagerightinset","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-storytypecover","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116596023549158744","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805231","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=805231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}