Aryna Sablanke won the
Madrid Open by beating Iga Swiatek in the final but she isn't convinced that she's going to dominate on clay despite the win.
Sabalenka demonstrated a really high level in Madrid to win the event for the second time in her career however that event is probably one of the only clay courts that actually favours the way she plays. That won't be the case in Rome or Roland Garros though she promised to work hard to see whether it can be a good surface for her:
“I will continue working hard and trying to give my best tennis in
Rome and Roland Garros. When this Tour is over we’ll see how things have
been for me on clay, if I’m really good on this surface or if I just
got lucky these weeks.”
This recent success is kind of surprising to her because despite being a hard worker all her life, Sabalenka was unsure whether she would be able to do all of this:
“If someone would say I would be a Grand Slam champion and I would be
No 2 in the world and that I would be winning titles on clay, I would
have thought, ‘I don’t know, it’s a lot of work to do and I’m not sure
that I’m capable of this’"
Asked how she got here, she simply said that it was a lot of working hard and not thinking about it:
“I wasn’t actually thinking about that. I think that was the key. I
was just working super hard, I kept improving my game, finding things
that I could do better, analyse my game a lot. So it was a lot of hard
work since my very first match at Fed Cup. Looking back I’m super proud
of myself and my team and what we’ve done these last years.”