Aryna Sabalenka made it to the final from the semifinals for one big reason: She absolutely destroyed Jessica Pegula’s second serve.
Her opponent’s second serve is so often Sabalenka’s bread and butter. She can step in and and send her opponent chasing backward or toward the tramlines, and often both all at once.
If someone had told Sabalenka that Elena Rybakina would land just 30 percent of her first serves in the first set today, Sabalenka surely would have signed on for that — while expecting to win the set or at least establish a lead.
Rybakina did her part. She landed just eight of 30 first serves, which amounts to 27 percent. That’s an unheard-of number just about anywhere on a professional tennis court, let alone in a final.
That’s the woman widely considered to have the best serve in the game, a human metronome who can torture opponents on the first ball and leave them despairing at how they can possibly win a point or two, let alone break her.
But Sabalenka couldn’t take advantage of Rybakina’s second serve in the way she so often does. Rybakina, the new world No. 1, can get a nasty kick on her ball, and she can also raise her speed to around 95 mph, rushing Sabalenka when she wants to get on top of the ball.
Again and again, Sabalenka either missed her second-serve return entirely or couldn’t do enough with it. With Rybakina serving up 4-3, Sabalenka had two looks at a second serve, one at deuce and one at ad-40 Rybakina. She sent both of them into the net.
Overall, if players are above a 50 percent win rate on their second serve, they are feeling decent about themselves — especially against someone like Sabalenka. Rybakina was at 68 percent in the first set.
Rybakina also did a good job of keeping Sabalenka on the defensive when the Belarusian missed her first serve, capturing 64 percent of the points on Sabalenka’s second serve.
Rybakina had served about as poorly as any opponent could hope. When the opening stanza was over, she still had the edge.
