Sabalenka assesses French Open defeat: 'Mentally I couldn't really recover'

It wasn't just that Aryna Sabalenka lost to Diana Shnaider in the French Open quarterfinals. It was how it happened. From 6-3, 4-1 up, and a 30-0 lead on serve in the 4-1 game, the World No. 1 went from the precipice of a 14th Grand Slam semifinal berth to a 3-6, 7-5, 6-0 loss on Wednesday amidst an increasing flurry of frustration.

Meeting reporters afterwards, a shell-shocked Sabalenka said she had "no thoughts, no emotions" to analyze the defeat, her earliest Grand Slam exit since a stomach bug contributed to her French Open quarterfinal loss to Mirra Andreeva two years ago. She then pinpointed to a capitulation not of her forehand or her serve, but of her mind -- and credited Shnaider for taking advantage of the volatility.

"I feel like I had very decent opportunities in the second set," she said. "I screw[ed] up, and then she stepped in and she played great. I feel like mentally I couldn't really recover after second set. That really ... I think that was the biggest mistake from me.

"I don't know when was the last time that happened to me that I lost 10 games in a row. I guess mentally I got into very deep, deep, dark hole over there, and I just couldn't get back mentally on track."

Emotions, both positive and negative, have long defined the 28-year-old's career -- and getting a handle on them has been key to her rise to the top of the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz. But the loss added another chapter to the accumulation of troubling defeats on surfaces other than hard courts that have followed her throughout that period, too. In 2023, she lost 7-6(5), 6-7(5), 7-5 to Karolina Muchova in the semifinals at Roland Garros, after holding a 5-2 in the third and having a match point. Last year, she committed 70 unforced errors in a blustery three-set defeat to Coco Gauff in Paris' championship match after being a set ahead, and she needed to apologize for critical comments she made about her play and Gauff's afterwards.

Wednesday's match against Shnaider featured similarly windy conditions, but Sabalenka admitted she played well in them for nearly two full sets.

"How can I complain [about the time] if ... everything was working OK for me, but then it just slipped away," she said. "I feel like it was getting crazy maybe just because mentally I wasn't really OK."

Sabalenka will maintain her hold on the top spot in the PIF WTA Rankings through Wimbledon, the only one of the four Grand Slams at which she has yet to reach the final. Tense defeats have followed her there, too -- she's lost in three sets in the semifinals in each of her last three appearances at the grass-court major, and from a set ahead in two -- and she says the process of solving the emotional side of her game is an ongoing one.

"I really feel great on clay. I feel great on grass. I think just, I don't know, maybe I'm focusing too much that I never won a Slam on each, and maybe it's kind of like [made] me overthink stuff, make me overemotional at some moments," she said. "I don't know. This is something that I actually have to kind of, like, step back and kind of, like, try to find a solution, because I just am so tired of me losing some matches not in the best way just because I was overemotional."

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, I guess," she added. "At some point I will figure that little situation, and I only will get back tougher. ... I just figure how I can overcome it."