Sabalenka Wins the 2024 US Open by Beating Pegula in Final

Arena sabalenka finally wins the US Open after many heartbreaking losses in late stages of the tournament in 2021 she lost a tough thre Setter to Lila Fernandez in the semis in 2022 she lost a tough thre Setter to igos fianc in the semis last year she lost a heartbreaker to cook a golf in the final so before the match started I did have this in the back of my mind that there were a lot of opportunities wasted so she wanted to win this match really badly but we're the nerves going to be a factor or not it turned out that they were to some extent but sabalenka has improved tremendously as a player not only in her game but also mentally and despite many ups and downs in this match she was able to persevere and beat a very tough Jessica pigula and get her first US Open title so let's quickly go through the match and try to figure out what happened so Pula started off very strong she had the crowd behind her was hitting the ball cleanly went up a break 21 sabalenka was not playing well she was making a lot of unforced errors but sabalenka found her game broke back and went up 5-2 in that first set interestingly Pula kind of lost her Rhythm was complaining about her strings I actually contacted yonas from tennis nerd and I was asking what tension she's using and turns out she's using 42 pounds and I was trying to figure out whether her strengths were too loose or too tight because to me it seemed like when she was losing all these consecutive games in that first set that she was leaving a lot of balls short and dumping some balls into the net so I thought that the strengths might have been a little bit too tight but in any case sabalenka was on top now and it looked at this point that she was going to dominate the match however when she was serving for it at 53 30 all she throws in a double fault and a double fault at this crucial stage in a match raised alarm bells for me because Arena used to have a lot of problems with double faults in crucial stages in matches and the double fault was causing her a lot of problems but the difference in the sabalenka Now versus back then is that even after serving a double fault at 5330 all which is the worst possible time to serve a double fault the next Point she hits a huge first serve makes it and hits a forand winner saves break point so that to me was a positive thing to have the ability to find your best tennis after doing something very poor in the match but despite saving that one break point she still lost her serve Pula broke back held serve and now it was five all the game game at five all was crucial for sabalenka because again at 30 all she throws in another double fault and gives spula break point this time Arena was very mad because she started swiping her racket on the ground and I thought uhoh is the second serve problem coming back but no sabalenka is a much stronger player mentally and she was able to save that break point and not only that she held serve and ended up breaking pigula serve and winning that first set seven 75 went up three love in a second it looked like she was going to cruise however Pula started playing a lot better see Pula is one of the greatest ball Strikers on tour she hits the ball so hard so clean and before the match and this is something I talked about in my semi-final preview I had my worries that pigula was going to have a chance because if sabalenka is playing on the top of her game and able to hit very hard into the corners because Jessica Pula stays a little bit closer to the Baseline she doesn't have the same foot speed as some other players she's gonna be in a lot of defensive situations and I don't really see her beating sabalenka so the only way she can beat her is if sabalenka either catches a bad day or plays somewhat tenative and tight and directs more balls towards the middle of the court so there were stages in yesterday's match where sabalenka was hitting through the middlemore and that goes right into pula's strike zones Pula can hit with anyone on tour and as hard as sabalenka was hitting those balls to Pula they were coming back with the same speed so Pula started playing unbelievable rattled off five straight games went from love three to 53 and I thought oh wow we're going to have a thre set Thriller but again Sabal Lena's improved mental game showed in this match he was able to break back and not only that win some really crucial points in games that were going over deuce and she deservingly won this match 7575 so I did not think this was the absolute top level of both Pula and sabalenka but I did think that both showed great mental strength this was a high pressure match and it was for sure an entertaining final so this time of the year I always look at the race and see who's going to qualify for the WTA finals and of course Vian and sabalenka are already qualified but the other players are not qualified yet only eight players make it there and the player that I'm hoping is going to qualify is Danielle Collins because it's her last season and she played unbelievably well I talked about Danielle's performances this year a lot on both of my channels however as of late Danielle has not been playing well and especially in monter where she lost in the first round to Andrea's sister Erica Andrea and then she lost in the first round of the US Open to Caroline dohy Daniel Collins's hot streak has cooled off tremendously however if I look at the race she's still in eighth position to make the year end Championship so if Danielle plays well in those tournaments prior to the year and championships she still has a chance to qualify and it would be nice to see her qualify it looks like rakina Pini Gula GF and avaro will qualify these are the players that are ahead of Danielle and rakina is a question mark we don't know exactly what's going on so we have to see if she is going to play again this year and there are also some really strong players behind Danielle Collins Jen is ninth in the race K kova is 10th and AA Peno is 11th so even they have outside chances if they do really well in some of those tournaments leading up to the WTA year end championships they could qualify as well in the regular rankings Pula is three in the world which is an unbelievable ranking and for all you Coco haters she only dropped to six in the world so all the US Open points from last year's title are gone and Koko is still six in the world what does it tell you it tells you that Koko has been playing pretty consistent tennis and she's far away from her top form and she's still ranked six in the world with the US Open points falling off Emma Navaro is eighth in the world so we have three very good American players in the top 10 American tennis is doing so great and the WTA is also doing so great I thought this entire women's US Open draw featured some fantastic matches the semifinals were super entertaining the final was super entertaining the WTA is in a good place