Sabalenka Under Fire For Comments About Gauff After Roland Garros Final Loss
NewsSunday, 08 June 2025 at 12:55
Aryna Sabalenka is one of the most honest players on the WTA Tour, but she was maybe just too honest after her loss in the 2025 Roland Garros final.
Sabalenka entered this year's Roland Garros final as the favorite, even though it was a match between the two highest-ranked players. She had a much tougher draw and bested Olympic champion Qinwen Zheng and four-time French Open winner Iga Swiatek on her way to the final.
However, like she did at the 2023 US Open, Coco Gauff managed to come from behind and beat Sabalenka in three sets despite losing the opening set of the match. The American player won the match 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4.
In the match, the American player hit 30 winners and she made the same number of unforced errors. Sabalenka, on the other hand, hit 37 winners, but she made an incredible 70 unforced errors, more than twice that of her opponent's amount.
Most of the Belarusian's unforced errors came because of Gauff's incredible defense, as the 21-year-old American always forced her opponent to hit one more shot, often forcing the World No. 1 to overhit and miss.
But after the match, Sabalenka felt like she was the one to blame. She was very disappointed by her performance and even went on to say that her semi-final opponent, Iga Swiatek, would have beaten Gauff in the final.
"That hurts. Especially when you’ve been playing really good tennis all week. If Iga [Swiatek] had beaten me the other day, I think she would have gone out today and gotten the win. It just hurts. I’ve been playing really well, and then in the last match, going out there and doing what I did, it hurts."
Sabalenka's comments immediately generated plenty of attention online. Many felt that the three-time Grand Slam champion was being disrespectful towards Gauff, failing to recognize her great defensive skills, which pushed the Belarusian to make so many mistakes.
On top of that, it's not the first Grand Slam final that Sabalenka lost to Gauff. In fact, the Belarusian player has lost both major finals that the two have played, and she even has a losing H2H record against the two-time major winner.
Sabalenka's comments didn't end with her saying that Swiatek would have beaten Gauff. The Belarusian player even went on to say that Gauff didn't win because of her own performance, but because of Sabalenka's unforced errors.
"I think it was more windy. Also, I think I was overemotional. Today, I didn’t handle myself quite well mentally. Basically, that’s it. I was just making unforced errors. I don’t know."
"I have to check the statistics. I think she won the match not because she played incredible. Just because I made all of those mistakes, if you look from the outside, from kind of easy balls."
At the end of the day, Sabalenka might just need to recharge her batteries after emotionally draining two weeks. She revealed that she will enjoy a few days off on the Greek island of Mykonos.
"I already have a flight booked to Mykonos. Alcohol. Sugar. I just need a couple days to completely forget about this crazy world and crazy… if I could swear right now I would... this crazy thing that happened today."
"I think everyone understands. I’m just trying to be very polite right now. There is no other word that could describe what just happened today on the court. But yeah, tequila, gummy bears. And I don’t know, swimming. Being like a tourist for a couple of days."
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