By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday October 29, 2023
As she prepares for this 12 months’s WTA Finals in Cancun, and solidifying her spot because the WTA’s year-end No.1, Aryna Sabalenka says that life on the prime isn’t actually all that totally different than it was earlier than.
The Belarusian fulfilled a lifelong dream when she rose to No.1 on this planet on September 11, and believes that issues aren’t that a lot totally different now that she has stood atop the WTA’s rating desk for seven weeks.
“It is not totally different, to be sincere,” she stated in Cancun, the place she is making ready to face Maria Sakkari in spherical robin play on Sunday.
25-year-old Sabalenka advised reporters that she want she had recognized of her capacities previous to this 12 months.
“I am considering that is actually loopy,” she stated when requested to sum up her 2023 season, which additionally featured her maiden main title on the Australian Open. “I want I’d know earlier that I truly can play that good.
“It is simply tremendous nice season, I feel the perfect season in my life thus far. Hopefully that is just the start: with yearly I am going to play higher and higher and the outcomes shall be higher and higher.” Removed from content material, Sabalenka says she plans to make use of her 2023 efficiency as inspiration – she aspires for larger and higher issues.
One in pink, seven in white: the EIGHT QUEENS of the WTA FINALS 2023!
(📸 Aryna Sabalenka, story IG) pic.twitter.com/G7NtwfHv7A
— We Are Tennis (@WeAreTennis) October 28, 2023
“I take advantage of this 12 months as a motivation for me to maintain working onerous, to maintain pushing, and see the place is my restrict are,” she stated.
By no means thoughts the rating, for the hard-hitting Belarusian, the purpose is to maintain the blinders on, hold working onerous and end robust – whether or not there’s a goal on her again or not.
“I feel rating, it is simply rating, you realize?” she stated. “It is not like I’m going on courtroom proper now and everybody shall be, Okay, I am not taking part in, you are No. 1, good luck within the subsequent spherical.
“It is not altering something. I nonetheless must work onerous. I nonetheless must convey my greatest tennis on courtroom. I feel I even must work extra as a result of proper now I really feel like I am a goal for everybody.
“It is not altering something. I am nonetheless working onerous, attempting to enhance.”
