22 Sets Without Dropping One. Then She Dropped the Final.

Aryna Sabalenka lost the 2025 Australian Open final and said she'd fix her mental game. She came back in 2026 but lost the final again. After the match she said her mentality was “much better than last year.” If the mental game improved and the collapse still happened, the thing that collapsed isn't mental.

March 12, 2026|Matthew Green

Aryna Sabalenka lost the 2025 Australian Open final and said she’d fix her mental game. She came back in 2026 having won 22 consecutive sets. She led 3-0 in the decider and lost five of the next six games to lose the championship. After the match she said her mentality throughout the final was “much better than last year.” If the mental game improved and the collapse still happened, the thing that collapsed isn’t mental.

Aryna Sabalenka is the world No.1 in women’s tennis. She walked into the 2026 Australian Open final at Rod Laver Arena on 1 February having won 11 straight matches and 22 consecutive sets, including the title in Brisbane three weeks earlier. She hadn’t lost a set in Melbourne in six rounds. She was chasing a third Australian Open title in four years, having won in 2023 and 2024.

She led 3-0 in the deciding set against fifth seed Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion. Then she lost five of the next six games and the match.

This isn’t the first time. In the 2025 Australian Open final, Sabalenka lost to Madison Keys after admitting her legs felt off from the start. She said she was on the back foot the entire match and couldn’t do her stuff. She smashed her racquet courtside afterwards. In last year’s French Open final, Coco Gauff beat her. At the WTA Finals in November, Rybakina beat her again. Sabalenka has now won four Grand Slam finals and lost four. Three of the four losses have come in her last four attempts.

The pattern is specific. She doesn’t lose early. She doesn’t lose to lower-ranked players in the fourth round. She wins 46 of 48 hardcourt Grand Slam matches across three years. The losses cluster at the exact point where the stakes are highest and the ability is most proven.

If you coach or manage athletes, you’ve watched a version of this. Someone dominant for weeks, an entire season. Then the final comes and something shifts that has nothing to do with preparation or talent.

The standard explanation is composure. Former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash said she “basically capitulated.” Former British No.1 Annabel Croft called her attitude in the final set “immature” and said that the minute panic set in, she steamrolled in the wrong direction. The word they both reached for was mental. Composure. Handling pressure better. Working on the mental game.

Sabalenka agrees with them. After the 2025 final, she said she’d work on her mental game to keep a tighter leash on her emotions. She did. She won the 2025 US Open. She opened 2026 by winning Brisbane, then steamrolled through six rounds in Melbourne without dropping a set. Even after the loss, she said her mentality throughout the 2026 final was “much better than last year.” The decisions she was making, the level she was playing, the way she was fighting. All improved.

If the mental game improved and the collapse still happened, the thing that collapsed isn’t mental.

And she still lost from 3-0 up in the decider.

That’s the part worth paying attention to. The composure was better. The mental game was better. She said so. The observers confirmed it. And the outcome was the same. She played great until a certain point. Her words. Then something shifted, fast. “It felt like in a few seconds it was 3-4 and I was down a break.”

If the mental game improved and the collapse still happened, the thing that collapsed isn’t mental.

Sabalenka’s 2025 quote is the one that stays with you. “My legs was off at the beginning of the match. I was on the back foot all the time.” That’s not a composure problem. That’s the body arriving at the final in a different state than it arrived at every other round. Her legs were fine for 12 matches. They weren’t fine for the 13th.

Nobody questions her ability. She is the most dominant force in women’s tennis on hard courts. The 46 wins from 48 matches prove that. What they prove equally is that something changes in the final. The same player, the same surface, the same tournament. A different response from the body when the moment shifts from winning matches to winning the trophy.

Sabalenka said she’d fix the mental game. She did. The collapse came anyway. Her legs knew something her preparation couldn’t reach.

The pattern Sabalenka showed in the final is what's known as the "Certainty Deficit". It's the space between what someone can do and what their body will let them do when it counts. Sabalenka won 22 consecutive sets coming into the 2026 AO final. However, in Grand Slam finals she's now lost four from eight, three of the last four. Her body treats these finals differently from every other match, and that difference shows up even after the mental work she has put in.

As for what she can do about it, the work that reaches where the deficit lives in her body is different from the mental game work she's already done.

Matthew Green
About the author

Matthew Green

Reducing the Certainty Deficit in high-performing people and teams · Emotional fitness coach for high-functioning men

Matthew works with athletes and performance teams to reduce the Certainty Deficit, the space between what you can do and what your body will let you do when it counts. The body holds beliefs. These run deeper than self-talk and they run faster than any conscious strategy. When those beliefs shift, the ceiling shifts.

He also supports high-functioning men to develop emotional fitness so they can live and lead from a place of clarity and inner stability. The work is somatic-first, practical and grounded.

If you're seeing a pattern current approaches haven't shifted, let's talk.

My origin story: Why elite athletes underperform when it counts

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