Aryna Sabalenka won her first US Open by learning from her past heartbreaks in New York

What do you do if you don’t like the noise a crowd is making for your opponent? If you’re Aryna Sabalenka, you tell them to make it for you instead.

In last year’s US Open final, Sabalenka said the roar that the pro-American audience made for her opponent, Coco Gauff, was so loud that it “blocked my ears” and led to her error-filled breakdown. This year, after hearing the same crowd roar the same way for Jessica Pegula for more than an hour, Sabalenka decided to ask—demand, actually—for some of that love for herself. The New York fans, who will never turn down a request to make themselves heard, obliged.

That may not have been the reason that Sabalenka eventually beat Pegula in two tight, entertaining, slam-bang 7-5, 7-5 sets for her third Grand Slam title. But it was another sign, among many, of the 26-year-old’s long-running evolution as a player and person. Instead of hanging her head and letting the crowd shout her down, she stayed loose, had some fun with the situation, and made it feel a little less oppressive.

“I heard a lot of support,” Sabalenka said during the trophy ceremony afterward. “You were cheering me on in those good moments.”

Sabalenka dropped just one set in seven matches in New York, but she more than earned her first US Open title. Since 2021, she had lost in the semifinals twice and the final once at Flushing Meadows, and each defeat had been a heartbreaker. First, she went out to little-known Leylah Fernandez 6-4 in the third set. Then she lost to Iga Swiatek after being up 4-2 in the third. Finally, she collapsed again Gauff after winning the first set, and chucked two of her racquets into a locker-room garbage can. Each time, it was Sabalenka’s own emotions, as much as her opponent’s skill, that sealed her fate.

This weekend, that same fate seemed to await her on three different occasions.

In her semifinal against another American, Emma Navarro, Sabalenka let a second-set lead slip, then fell behind in the tiebreaker. She stared at her team. She rolled her eyes. She banged her racquet on the court. But just when another meltdown appeared imminent, she gathered herself, stopped ranting, and closed Navarro out with mistake-free tennis.

“I was, like, ‘No, no, no, Aryna, it’s not going to happen again,’” she said after beating Navarro. “You have to control your emotions. You have to focus on yourself.”

“I’m really glad that the lessons [were] learned.”

On Saturday against Pegula, Sabalenka tested her ability to control her emotions again, when she built leads in both sets only to watch them evaporate.

In the first, she served at 5-3, but was suddenly gripped by nerves. She double faulted, sent a forehand 10 feet long, and was broken.

In the second set, she went up 3-0, and seemed to have broken Pegula’s spirit. But after Pegula saved a break point for 0-4, the American regained her form and focus, and the crowd responded. Sabalenka was caught off guard, and had no answer to Pegula’s better play. In the blink of an eye she was down 3-5.

“I thought she was emotionally so down at three-love,” Sabalenka said. “I guess I wasn’t ready, and I only woke up when it was 3-5. I said, ‘I have to come back and I have to get this game.’”

With Pegula serving at 5-4, Sabalenka showed her champions’ mettle, and her champion’s athleticism. She started the game by leaping high for a backhand volley, and she finished it with a forehand that landed smack on the sideline for a winner.

“I know that I have to go for it,” Sabalenka said. “That’s the only way it works for me.”

She went for it, and she leveled the set at 5-5. Two games later she had her US Open title.

“I just remember all those tough losses I had to go through,” she said. “All these tough lessons to hold this beautiful trophy.”

Sabalenka, as she always is when she wins, was too strong for Pegula in the end. She dictated with her serve, her return, and her ground strokes, and constantly hurried and harried Pegula. Sabalenka hit 40 winners to 22 for Pegula, and was 18 of 23 at net. She lost control of her game in each set, just like she had lost it here in the past. But this time she was able to regain command.

“I think mentally I became really strong,” Sabalenka told ESPN when she was asked what had changed to make her a Grand Slam champion. “I keep reminding myself, ‘Come on Aryna, you’ve been through a lot, slowly things will come back to you.’”

The toughest setback that Sabalenka faced was the death of her father, Sergey, the man who had introduced her to tennis, at age 43.

After I lost my father, it’s always been my goal to put our family name in the history of tennis. Aryna Sabalenka, on Saturday

“Every time I see my name on that trophy, I’m so proud of myself, I’m proud of my family that they never gave up on my dream and that they were doing everything they could to keep me going.”

Now Sabalenka—Sergey’s name and Aryna’s name—are engraved in US Open history forever.