Sabalenka's astonishing comeback sets up final against Gauff

The big-hitting Belarusian seemed down and out but found a way to win her US Open semi-final against Keys

A three-set defeat after serving an opening-set bagel can be a sour outcome to digest, as Madison Keys would’ve felt after losing her US Open semi-final to Aryna Sabalenka with an astonishing 6-0, 6-7(1), 6-7(5-10) scoreline on Thursday night.

Sabalenka would know, having been through the rare reversal herself in February at a WTA event in Dubai. Turning up for her first tournament since becoming a Grand Slam champion at the Australian Open, Sabalenka imploded in a 6-0, 6-7(2), 1-6 quarter-final loss to Barbora Krejcikova.

The big-hitting Belarusian has been prone to such mid-match breakdowns, and showed signs of that on Thursday as Keys unlocked her beast mode for the first six games. Getting broken again in the third game of the second set, Sabalenka went chattering away to her box, slammed her racquet against the towel stand and flung it towards her team.

The meltdown done; it was immediately dusted. In the next game and on her third break point where Keys struck a backhand wide, Sabalenka stared at her box again, this time with an assured first bump.

That would be the start of the top-drawer turnaround from the world No. 1-in-waiting that put Sabalenka one step away from her career and season’s second Slam triumph, although home favourite Coco Gauff would like one of her own on Saturday.

The Australian Open champion has been a familiar face in the semi-finals of all majors this year— the first woman to do so in a single season since Serena Williams in 2016. This was, however, only her second win from seven outings in the last-four stage of Slams. All the other five defeats came in three-setters, with Sabalenka blowing an opening-set lead in three of them.

"I (kept) reminding myself that I lost a lot of tough matches. One day all those matches should just, like, help me somehow," Sabalenka said after the semi-final.

Those matches were also ill-timed. In each of her three Slam appearances last year — she was banned from competing at Wimbledon — Sabalenka lost after winning the first set. The 25-year-old's three-set hoodoo carried forward into this season, and even after her Australian ascendancy. First set won yet semi-final lost against Ons Jabeur at Wimbledon. Second set won yet semi-final lost against Karolina Muchova at Roland Garros.

However, that Australian Open final with Elena Rybakina in which Sabalenka dropped the first set yet picked up the trophy on her fourth championship point did teach her that when the going is tough, "take a deep breath and just work".

Which she did in her semi-final at Flushing Meadows when Sabalenka was rattled for much for the first two sets but not routed, mentally or otherwise. Down 0-6, 4-5 with Keys serving for the match, Sabalenka broke to love. Down a break again in the third set at 2-4, Sabalenka broke right back and then thwarted two more break chances to take the late-night tussle to a 10-point dash in which she cruised.

"This kind of thinking helped me to stay in the game and give me some hope that I'll be able to turn around this match, that the match is not over until the last point, and that I just have to keep fighting, keep trying to find my rhythm, my game, just find myself," she said.

If Sabalenka does find her game in the final, the teenaged Gauff will have a tall task. The American also overcame some tricky moments in her 6-4, 7-5 semi-final win against the wily Muchova, and has been on song in the US hard-court swing.

In her previous Slam final show, though, a clearly overawed Gauff managed to win just four games in Paris last year. Sabalenka, from her first major final, is bound to be richer by the down-but-not-out experience in Melbourne this year.