Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine beat Aryna Sabalenka in her second match at the Miami Open. She was so angry that she broke her racket three times.
After the top ten seeds, Kalinina is ranked 32nd in the world, so she is definitely not a slouch. But you wouldn’t have thought she could beat Sabalenka, who is ranked second in the world and just won the Australian Open, on a hard court, which is Sabalenka’s favorite surface.
Things are not normally like this, though. Her personal life has been very hard since last Sunday night, when her ex-boyfriend Konstantin Koltsov fell off the balcony of a high-end Miami resort. The death was called a “apparent suicide” by Miami-Dade Police.
Sabalenka later made a statement saying “Konstantin’s death is an unthinkable tragedy, and while we were no longer together, my is heart is broken.” She wore all black to both of her Miami matches and didn’t show up to any of her press statements.
There was no handshake after Kalinina’s 6-4, 1-6, 6-1 win, but that is normal when players from Ukraine take on those from Russia or Belarus. It should not be taken as proof of Sabalenka’s mental state, even though her vehement triple racket-smash – which came as soon as her final return had slid wide – showed that she was clearly angry with the result.
“It’s always tough to play on big stages against these top players,” said Kalinina, who has now beaten two former world No1s in back-to-back matches after her first-round win over Carolina Wozniacki. “Buzzing nerves made today really hard, but I was able to handle it when things got tough.”
Sabalenka had won her opening match against Paula Badosa, her best friend in the locker-room, by a 6-4, 6-3 result. “We’ve been through a lot in our lives,” Badosa said after that match, “and we’re strong women and we knew how to separate that [professional tennis] in that moment.”
Now Sabalenka may get some time off from the game, which could be a good thing. Even before the Koltsov tragedy happened, she had not been expected to play her next tournament until the Porsche Open in Stuttgart in three week’s time.