"Challenging. Terrible... Unbelievable. Incredible": Aryna Sabalenka contrasts 2023 WTA Finals to her season overall

Aryna Sabalenka has made a striking contrast between her "challenging" week at the 2023 WTA Finals in Cancun and her "incredible" overall season.

World No. 1 Sabalenka was one the most vocal of the players expressing their concerns over the conditions at the 2023 WTA Finals in Cancun. After the WTA announced in September that it would spend $6 million on a new stadium for the prestigious season-ending championship, construction work remained unfinished until the day before the tournament was due to begin.

Once players were able to access the Estadio Paradisus, Sabalenka (along with Elena Rybakina and Marketa Vondrousova) voiced her disappointment in the "unsafe" conditions and quality of the courts.

Over the course of the event, multiple players seemed to be struggling to adapt to the courts, and several matches were suspended due to rain. This included Sabalenka's third Group Stage match against Rybakina and her semi-final clash with Iga Swiatek, both of which were suspended by a day.

After her defeat to Swiatek, Sabalenka was asked to sum up both the WTA Finals and her season in three words each. While the 25-year-old chose only negative words to describe the Finals, she was much more positive about her successful season.

"About my performance here… challenging. Terrible. Not the best. Super sad… and this season? Unbelievable. Incredible. The best (laughing). I wish I would say the best about this tournament," she said.

The Belarusian player won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open in January and reached her first US Open final in September. These successes helped her to usurp Swiatek as World No. 1 in the WTA Ranking, a position that she reached on September 11 and has now held for eight weeks.