Key events
Sabalenka is arriving at the locker room, and I wonder how he’s feeling. There’ll have been enormous relief at winning here last year, but there remains a fragility about her – perhaps necessarily so, given how hard she hits it, the margins for error so slim. But Rybakina ought really to have beaten her in last year’s final, which to say she’s never brought her best gear to the biggest occasion and she’ll know that. Gauff will too.
Over the last few days, Yastremska has used her platform to speak openly and movingly about what it means to be Ukrainian right now. She’s a very impressive young woman, and I don’t think tonight will get big on her.
That’s good and ultimately unexpected news. Kyrgios has been a lot of fun in commentary, and one thing that shines through is his love for the game, so it makes perfect sense that he’s decided he’s still got things to do.
The conditions might affect our first match, too. If it’s cloudy but not raining, the roof will be open and conditions slower, which might make things harder for Sabalenka by slowing her down … or might mean her extra power is even more significant because it’s harder to Gauff to generate any in response.
It’s a grey day in Melbourne, but it’s also a multicoloured day because it’s Pride Day. What a great innovation that is.
Preamble
In the 1988 FA Cup semi-finals, Nottingham Forest were drawn to play Liverpool, while Luton Town took on Watford. Which, on the face of things, has nothing whatsoever to do with our 2024 Australian Open semi-finals.
But here comes the segue! Luton and Watford were poor relations from whom no one expected anything, while Forest and Liverpool were fantastic sides, two of the best three in the country at the time; their match was widely touted as the final before the final, with good reason.
Except it was Wimbledon who won the Cup, teaching us, once again, that life, and sport in particular, don’t do what we expect them to. So we shouldn’t simply expect that whichever of Aryna Sbalenka and Coco Gauff wins this morning will simply stroll to the title. and if retro football isn’t your thing, just ask poor Ons Jabeur, who beat Sabalenka in the Wimbldeon semis, only to lose her long-awaited coronation of a final to the unseeded Markéta Vondrousová – who’d beaten the unseeded Elina Svitolina to get there.
Coco Gauff v Aryna Sabalenka, though, what a match! Gauff has improved massively over the last year, far better at hiding her forehand than before, but perhaps the biggest change has been a mental one. She now contests these matches expecting to prevail, having come from behind to beat Sabalenka in the US Open final.
Sabalenka, though, is the defending champion, her terrifying power and developing hands a brutal night for anyone. Her cruelty in dismantling Barbora Krejcikova was almost hard to watch but was, of course, fantastic to watch, and she could scarcely arrive at this match in better form.
However there’s always a however so, however: Sabalenka is brilliant at demolishing the lesser lights to reach the last four of Slams – eight in a row now – but has only one final to show for that. It’s not so easy to bully the bigger girls and it won’t be so easy for her to bully Gauff – though we can be certain she’ll try.
Our second match, as the late John Motson once said, appears “to be between the also-rans.” Dayana Yastremska is a qualifier who, in 2021, failed a drug test before later being cleared. It’s impossible to imagine the pain and frustration that must’ve entailed – in 2021, then a promising youngster, she travelled to Melbourne and quarantined for two weeks in a hotel room before discovering her provisional ban would not be lifted. So for her, this is relief and redemption after a long struggle, meaning anyone who plays her is also playing that. She is not to be taken lightly, at all.
And we can be certain Qinwen Zheng knows that. She stands at the edge of immortality, hoping to become the first Chinese to win a major since Li Na, who won Australia in 2014. But with great opportunity comes great pressure, and though she’s handled it well so far – it’s been clear for a couple of rounds that these are the moments of her life – whatever happens here, being her will never be the same again. This is going to be great!
