By Richard Pagliaro | Friday, January 8, 2021

 

"I want to focus only on what I am doing on court," said Aryna Sabalenka, who will face Ons Jabeur in the Abu Dhabi round of 16.

Photo credit: @jtbankaostravaopen

Aryna Sabalenka arrived in Abu Dhabi seeking serenity in sport and life.

These days, the explosive Belarusian is bringing both the calm—and the storm—to court.

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A streaking Sabalenka scored her 11th straight victory stopping Ajla Tomljanovic 7-5, 6-4 to burst into the Abu Dhabi WTA Women’s Tennis Open round of 16.

The fourth-seeded Sabalenka rolled out to a 4-0 lead on the strength of deep drives, eventually extending to 5-2. Tomljanovic answered with a three-game run to level.

Sabalenka stopped the uprising stamping a love hold then earning her third break to take a one-set lead. Tomljanovic broke to open the second set before Sabalenka stormed through six of the last eight games to extend her winning streak.



The Sabalenka surge started last fall when she finished the season sweeping successive titles in Ostrava and Linz to secure her first year-end Top 10 ranking and tie Simona Halep for the 2020 Tour title lead winning three tournaments.

Eager to sustain that momentum, Sabalenka said she didn’t take much time off during the offseason. Instead, she set some simple goals for 2021: total commitment to the task at hand, tempering her prodigious power with patience and maintaining a sense of calm.

“Honestly, heading into this new year I don’t think I have any expectations as last year showed us that everything can change in one second. I just want to make sure I am 100 percent on things every day while enjoying the present,” Sabalenka told the media in Abu Dhabi.

“Of course, game-wise I need to find consistency in my play and be calm and professional about everything that concerns tennis and life. Perhaps, before I had a lot of expectations, but this year it’s different and I want to focus only on what I am doing on court. Every day I find something new and I hope through this I will keep finding something new each time.”

It's a formula she will try to apply in a riveting round-of-16 clash vs. Ons Jabeur.

The 15th-seeded Jabeur rallied past qualifier Kateryna Bondarenko 5-7, 6-3, 6-2. Jabeur, who beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in round one, out-dueled Sabalenka 7-6(7), 2-6, 6-3 in their lone prior meeting at Roland Garros.



At the end of last season, Sabalenka shared a less-is-more mental approach as a key to unlocking her aggressive game. Sabalenka said she stopped being obsessed with the sport off-court and is learning to stop sweating the small stuff and committing total focus on court.

"I changed my mind a little bit, I stopped overthinking about tennis,” Sabalenka said. “I start to think that this is my job and I have to go there and give everything I can and just do everything we've been working on, and these kind of thoughts helped me to be more professional and more consistent maybe on the court.

“So yeah, I think this is what I am going to bring on the season and hopefully it's going to work.”

Top-seeded Sofia Kenin advanced when Kirsten Flipkens was forced to retire due to a left ankle injury with the Australian Open champion holding a 5-4 second-set lead.

The 86th-ranked Flipkens broke five times in the opening set—including successive love breaks—to take the set 7-5. It marked the first time in three meetings the former Wimbledon semifinalist took a set from Kenin.

The Roland Garros runner-up scored the only break of the second set for 3-2 and was serving to force a decider when Flipkens suffered the injury and was forced to pull the plug.

"She played a really good match," Kenin told the media afterward. "It was the third time we’ve played each other, and it was a really solid match from both of us. This is not the way I wanted to win."

"I just hope she’s going to have a speedy recovery, she’s obviously playing well. This is just really unfortunate, and I’ll write to her later tonight, asking how she is."





Kenin will play Yulia Putintseva for a quarterfinal spot next.

No. 13-seeded Putintseva won the final three games topping Barbora Krejcikova 6-4, 7-5.

Tamara Zidansek backed up her three-set upset of 11th-seeded Jennifer Brady by beating talented Canadian lefty Leylah Fernandez 6-4, 6-4.