Aryna Sabalenka lacks intensity on a tennis court.
That’s a bit like saying Novak Djokovic isn’t stretchy enough for tennis or that Carlos Alcaraz never looks happy when he plays.
All the results from Day 3 at The Championships
Djokovic was joking, of course, when he suggested that about Sabalenka after practising with her at Aorangi Park before The Championships; you won’t find a fiercer, more committed athlete on the grass this summer than the world No.1, who is through to the last 32 of the ladies’ singles after beating Marie Bouzkova 7-6(4), 6-4.
Centre Court can be a lonely and exposing place for players. It possibly feels lonelier than ever on the lawn this summer as this is the first Wimbledon without line judges.
But Sabalenka has presence. With her power game, her star power and her big screams and cries of “let’s go”, Sabalenka commanded this space, this rectangle of grass, as perhaps only she can.
With Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters – and previously of Nirvana – sitting in the Royal Box, this was amped-up lawn tennis, with the intensity, the power and the volume turned up high just after lunch on Wednesday.
Can you say that a tennis player rocked Centre Court in a second round match? With Sabalenka, maybe you can.
Of the three top seeds in the ladies’ singles, Sabalenka is the only one left in the draw – after Americans Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula lost in the opening round – but she was projecting strength here, even when Bouzkova served for the opening set.
In fact, that was the moment when Sabalenka, who is the top seed at Wimbledon for the first time, was at her most intense.
Sabalenka told the crowd afterwards how “sad” it is that so many of the leading women have already been eliminated – Qinwen Zheng, the No.5 seed, also went out in the opening round – but she will be staying focused on what she is doing rather than being distracted by events elsewhere.
“I don’t want any more upsets in this tournament,” she said.
The other day, Sabalenka hit some balls with Jannik Sinner, the men’s world No.1. There are some strong parallels between the two and not just because of their rankings.
Both have been trying to move on from the disappointment of losing a Roland-Garros final. Both have three Grand Slam titles, all on hard courts, and both are looking to win a first Wimbledon crown. Both can smack the ball through the grass.
If Sabalenka showed before Wimbledon that she has rhythm – doing a TikTok dance with Gauff – this was the occasion, on her first Centre Court appearance of the Fortnight, that she demonstrated she has the power to possibly become the Wimbledon champion.
Conditions were cooler on Wednesday than on the first two days of the Fortnight, which meant that the ball wasn’t fizzing through the air quite as quickly. But that hardly slowed down Sabalenka, a semi-finalist here in 2021 and 2023, who missed last summer’s Championships with a shoulder injury.
As a former Wimbledon quarter-finalist, Bouzkova knows what she is doing on a grass court and the Czech broke Sabalenka for a 6-5 lead in the opening set, only to lose her serve in the very next game.
It was Sabalenka who played the better tennis in the tie-break, and who controlled the second set.
“That was a tough battle,” she said. “I was super happy to win that.”
Sabalenka goes through to play the winner of Emma Raducanu’s match against 2023 ladies’ singles champion Marketa Vondrousova.