10 Incredible Achievements of Aryna Sabalenka After Winning the 2024 US Open
10 Incredible Achievements of Aryna Sabalnka:
Aryna Sabalenka cemented her place among the world’s best tennis players with her dominant victory at the 2024 US Open.
Her incredible 7-5, 7-5 victory over Jessica Pegula was her third Grand Slam triumph and her maiden US Open championship. Among them are the fact that, since the beginning of 2023, she has gone 27-1 in major hard-court tournaments and is 55-5 in set matches.
Here are ten remarkable accomplishments Sabalenka has achieved with this victory:
She becomes just the fourth women’s player in active competition to have won three or more Grand Slams in her career. On that list, she now stands alongside Venus Williams (seven), Iga Swiatek (five), and Naomi Osaka (four).
She is only the second female winner of several majors in a single year in the previous eight years. Swiatek also took home two in 2022; however, Angelique Kerber’s victory from 2016 must be considered prior.
She is only the second female winner of both the Australian Open and US Open in the past 27 years. Kerber not only won both in 2016 but also set a record for the most consecutive wins by a woman in 1997 with her victory over Martina Hingis.
She has now won 24 of the previous 25 sets she has played, as well as her last 12 wins in a row. The only set Sabalenka has lost since the start of Cincinnati came against Ekaterina Alexandrova in the US Open third round. In a match that began at 12:08 am, the latest start time for a match in US Open history, Sabalenka overcame a first set blowout to win 2-6, 6-1, 6-2 at 1:48 am.
At hard-court majors, she is currently 27-1 since the beginning of 2023. She lost to Coco Gauff in the US Open final last year, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, which was her lone defeat at one of the previous four hard-court majors.
In sets played at hard-court majors since the beginning of 2023, she is also 55-5. She suffered three set losses in the 2023 US Open (one to Madison Keys in the semifinals and one to Gauff in the championship match), one set loss at the 2023 Australian Open (to Elena Rybakina in the final), and one set loss at the 2024 US Open (to Alexandrova).
Sabalenka accomplished a number of achievements in the final few rounds prior to the championship match, one of which being defeating Zheng Qinwen 6-1, 6-2 to increase her career record to 9-1 in Grand Slam quarterfinals. This year, at Roland Garros, she suffered her lone defeat in a major quarterfinal match to Mirra Andreeva. She led by a set and a break, and even in the third set, before losing 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4.
Additionally, she became the second player to qualify for this year’s WTA Finals after defeating Emma Navarro in her semifinal match. In November, the world No. 2 will travel to Riyadh to join the world No. 1 Swiatek.
She topped $25 million in career prize money with her $3.6 million prize money check for taking home the crown. She went from $24,761,708 to $28,361,708 in a genuine spike.
Finally, at the top of the WTA rankings, she closed the point differential between herself and Swiatek. Sabalenka was down by 2,679 ranking points (10,695 to 8,016) into the US Open. The current difference is 2,169 points (10,885 to 8,716). Between this time and the conclusion of the previous year, Swiatek scored 1,760 more points than she did.
