"We’re done. We're quitting. The season’s over, and we may or may not come back" - Aryna Sabalenka's coach unveils how close she was from quitting for good

Aryna Sabalenka is arguably the best player on the WTA Tour. Currently the world number one having remained on top for all of 2025, she reached multiple big finals and achieved countless amounts of success. This may have never happened if she failed to get over her serving troubles in 2022, with her coach Jason Stacy threatening for them to quit and leave the sport all together.

The pair have been working together for seven years, with Stacy overseeing an incredible rise to the pinnacle of tennis. Four Grand Slam titles, nine WTA 1000 titles and a total of 58 weeks as the world number one. While the highs have been terrific, the lows have been extremely concerning. Almost bad enough to force Sabalenka away from the sport completely.

In 2023, Sabalenka won her maiden Grand Slam title in the Australian Open. She had just come off a very low 2022 campaign where her progress seemed to have stalled slightly. However, she had overcome her woes to rule supreme. Her growth was something that Stacy highlighted on The Line podcast.

"For me, it highlights the growth, the maturity, the willingness to be more vulnerable and face fears—not just professional ones, but personal ones. Everyone’s burying things, hiding things, staying in a comfort zone," he stated. "Facing all that takes a lot of strength. Most people don’t even realise what they’re avoiding, much less do something about it. We went through a lot personally, professionally, individually, and as a team.

"The year before that we had a lot of struggles—technical stuff. Her serve was her big deeper fear: she knew it could be the Achilles' heel for getting to the next level. She had a great serve, but technically she didn’t fully understand it. She didn’t know why things were off, so she’d have 10 things in her mind instead of understanding, 'Oh, it’s my wrist,' or 'It’s my toss.' In 2021 we had that great run—semifinals and finishing strong—but in the finals her serve fell apart with the elevation and everything. Then it just snowballed."

It was concerning times for the Belarusian, who saw her tennis career falling apart around her. "It started as a technical issue that became a mental issue," Stacy explained. "She didn’t understand what was wrong, so she had no sense of control. My goal was to bring in Gavin [MacMillan]—the biomechanics guy. Not just to fix technique but to give her that sense of control. Once she had that, the negative stress and mental pressure went away. I wasn’t traveling much that year because of health issues, but I saw her in San Jose losing the same way, breaking all the wrong records—double faults, everything. She was on the ground crying after the match. We had a plan for what to say, but halfway there I said, 'Forget it. I’m taking over.'

Stacy saw everything from afar and was desperate to turn the situation around. "She was fighting and showing up every day, but I asked her, 'Do you want to keep fighting, or do you want to win?' Because there’s a difference. Being tough only gets you so far. At that level, you need more than grinding."

It got very close to the point of no return. "I told her, 'We’re either getting this biomechanics guy, or we’re done. We're quitting. The season’s over, and we may or may not come back.' She was at rock bottom and finally said, 'Okay.' That night I called him. Two sentences in, I knew he was the guy. He pointed out something about her left arm immediately—so obvious once he said it. To her credit, she was open. Within weeks, everything changed. Night and day."

Once the serving problem was fixed, everything was back to normal and Sabalenka goes on to achieve what she does. "Because we’d been building everything else for years. Once the missing technical piece was fixed, everything came together. She already had the rest of the puzzle. But the border—this fundamental piece—was missing. After she addressed it, she went to the Australian Open and won. She had this calm fierceness the whole tournament—totally dialled in," he concluded.