Aryna Sabalenka once again played fantastic matches to give her team the first win at the 2024 World Tennis League.
The WTA World No. 1 player is part of The Hawks team at the 2024 World Tennis League. In their first tie at the competition, The Hawks took on The Falcons, but they lost the tie thanks to Andrey Rublev's late heroics in the tie.
Sabalenka won both of her matches, first doubles and then singles, but it was not enough for her team to win the tie. The reason was that with those two wins, she gave her team only a three-game lead, as at the World Tennis League, games won across all matches are added up to form the score.
Taking on The Eagles, who lost their first tie to The Kites, Sabalenka was even more dominant, which ensured that her team could win despite losing the last match quite significantly.
The tie started with the women's doubles match, and again, Sabalenka was joined by Mirra Andreeva on the court. Their opponents were Iga Swiatek and Paula Badosa.
Sabalenka knows both of these players really well. Swiatek has been her rival for the World No. 1 spot, while Badosa is her good friend and also a player that she plays against a lot.
Sabalenka and Andreeva proved to be the much stronger doubles pairing in this doubles match, beating their opponents 6-1 to give their team a crucial lead.
The Eagles then surprisingly chose not to nominate Swiatek for the women's singles match, but instead Badosa. Given that the match was played on the indoor hard courts, this might have been a good choice, but the result didn't prove that.
Sabalenka was overwhelming for her good friend, beating Badosa 6-2, increasing her team's lead already to 12-3, which seemed to be impossible to lose.
On top of that, her teammates, Jordan Thompson and Sumit Nagal, did well in the men's doubles. They took on Alexander Shevchenko and Stefanos Tsitsipas, winning the match 6-4.
That meant that ahead of the last match of the tie, which was a men's singles match, The Hawks were already leading 18-7. The two players nominated for the men's singles tie were Nagal and Shevchenko.
If The Eagles wanted to win, Shevchenko would have to win 11 games more than his opponent and then also win the match tie-break.
To win those 11 games more, he needed to win the set they played, sending the match into overtime, and then win any number of consecutive games that he would trail his opponent by.
That means that if Shevchenko won the match only 7-6, he would need to win 10 consecutive games in overtime to send the match into the match tie-break.
Shevchenko did much better than that in the match, beating Nagal 6-2. By doing so, he erased four games from the lead of the opposing team, but the big task was just ahead of him.
He sent the match into overtime but was still trailing 13-20, meaning he had to win seven games in a row. He won the opening game of the overtime but lost the next one.
Nagal was able to secure a 21-14 win for The Hawks, mostly thanks to Sabalenka's crushing wins at the start of the tie.
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