By Karolos Grohmann
PARIS (Reuters) – World number one Aryna Sabalenka’s French Open semi-final victory over four-time champion Iga Swiatek on Thursday carried her to her first ever final in Paris but no one from her team is celebrating her big win over the ‘queen of clay’ just yet.
Sabalenka battled past the defending champion in three sets to set up a final against second seed American Coco Gauff.
The Belarusian is seeking to add her first claycourt Grand Slam to her collection that already includes two consecutive Australian Open titles in 2023-24 and last year’s U.S. Open crown. All three of these titles were won on hardcourts.
But for her coach Anton Dubrov the key is for the 27-year-old to remain grounded despite the big win over the best female claycourt player in the past two decades.
“It was a great match against Iga, but I don’t see it as something like as a huge win right now,” Dubrov told a press conference on Friday.
“Maybe in a few weeks, few months I will look back and say it’s great, but for now I don’t see that it was something special.”
Sabalenka has said that for years she was told that she would not succeed on clay as the surface was not necessarily suited to her power game.
But it was this game that carried her past Swiatek, with her powerful serve helping dish out a bagel in the last set.
“The job is not done. So we don’t experience this kind of high, like emotions right now,” Dubrov said. “It’s like what’s the next step. Great level, good quality, but we need to move on and do something else.
“What we’re trying to message to Aryna is we cannot control the result, but we can control how we can do it, and only the result can show us, was this work actually what we need or was it something else.”
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
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