ANALYSIS: Can world number two Aryna Sabalenka find her serve for the Australian Open?
The loud thump of a ball rocketing off the racquet, the sight of a ball sliding off the paint in the corner of the service box.A perfectly hit serve grabs the attention, just like a well-timed cover drive in cricket or a powerful slam dunk in basketball.
For most of the 2021 season, Sabalenka's rise up the rankings was driven by her ability to dominate points with her big, right-handed serve. She is one of the most talented players in the game and the youngest player inside the women's top five. In the first set, Sabalenka sent down 11 double faults, and in the second another seven. By the third set, she had resorted to sending down underarm forehands, just to get the ball in play.It wasn't enough, and Peterson recorded her first win against a top five-ranked opponent. For Sabalenka, it was her fourth loss in a row and sixth in her last eight matches.
Sabalenka's semi-final against unseeded 19-year-old Canadian Leylah Fernandez was tight. In the first set tie-break, a double fault handed the decisive edge and eventually the set to Fernandez. For the tournament, more than 15 per cent of her service points ended in double faults, nearly twice her lifetime average."[I'm] So really disappointed with my level in the end of the season and with my serve," she said.When prompted about whether the issues were injury related, she was sanguine."The whole match I was really struggling with my serve. On some moment I found it, and on some moment I couldn't do anything with my serve.
Quite famously, Michael Chang initially served underarm while suffering from exhaustion on the way to his 1989 French Open win, before utilising the tactic as a weapon due to its early success.The phenomenon is hard to quantify, but easy to recognise. Many theories abound as to what causes it. For some, the problem resolves after mere days or weeks. For others, such as Errani, the issue tracks them for years.For Sabalenka, the cause is a little hard to unwrap. The issues seem to have significantly worsened after she fell on her wrist at the 2021 US Open, and her subsequent battle against COVID-19.
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