What was it like coaching a teenage Aryna Sabalenka? Maciej Domka was the Belarusian’s coach in her last years before becoming an adult and knows well what the mind of the two-time Grand Slam winner was like. Instability marked her progress, but did not stop her.
The former Polish tennis player Maciej Domka joined the team Aryna Sabalenka when she was 17 years old, some time after having trained Agnieszka Radwanska or Caroline Wozniacki. In 2016 she arrived at the Academy of also former tennis player Uładzimir Wałczkou located in Minsk, where she started a new professional and personal project. There she met the Belarusian woman when she was responsible for the female part of the academy: “We trained together, she was in our group. Aryna was then between 17 and 18 years old, she was under my care, although she also had her individual coach and the one closest to her was Vadim Sashurin, who was in charge of her motor preparation”, he told the Polish media Sport.Pl.
Domka stressed that that teenager has nothing to do with the woman who has achieved so much today. And Sabalenka was not that player who stood out for her brilliant results in her junior stage: “Hoday Aryna is seen in a completely different way from the point of view of her recent successes. Back then, in the academy, she stood out for her diligence. She was incredibly determined to work and trained at very high intensity. I don’t think anyone there has trained as hard as her. However, Aryna’s youth was average, if not weak. She also played in smaller tournaments, but initially without much success.”
A year after working there, Aryna began winning ITF 25 tournaments, at which point she began “take off”. However, the Belarusian went through difficult times personally and had to fight with constant setbacks that were reflected in her toughness on the courts. And Aryna was practically alone in those moments: “Parents did not show up for training. From what I know, his father had some legal problems. Aryna was alone in all of this. I have the impression that this was also her internal motivation that pushed her forward, she wanted to stand out at all costs. She could read between the lines that her father had problems and she wanted to help and start earning money. There was a lot of anger in her. She turned all that negative energy into punches.”
A crucial mental leap
That instability outside of tennis greatly marked her progress, but Sabalenka was able to channel all that to transform it into great resilience thanks to which, today, she has won two Grand Slam titles and become number 1 in the world: “In his youth he was, above all, very unstable. I know he worked with a psychologist. He is helped by a firm team with a positive attitude. The psychologist had to give good results, because she made a great leap of consciousness. I am very happy that she has evolved so much.”
2024-02-16 10:49:11
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