Aryna Sabalenka Turns the Haters Into Fuel as Her US Open Three-Peat Bid Begins

“Who cares what people think?” Aryna Sabalenka said it in New York with a shrug that took her the better part of a season to earn, and it is the truest thing anyone has said about her title defense. The world’s top-ranked woman walks back onto the court she has made her own carrying something heavier than a target: an indifference she had to build from scratch.

Strip away the seeding talk and the bracket previews and the part that matters is out of sight. Sabalenka is not the hunted champion nursing a lead. She is a competitor who decided, somewhere between the boos and the group chats, that the noise belonged to her — hers to ignore, or hers to burn.

It did not always land that lightly. Earlier this year, after a final she lost, she said the quiet part out loud. “I’ve never faced that much hate in the locker room,” she admitted, and then the line that stuck: “so many people who hate me for no reason. I did nothing.” She called it really tough. She also said it was getting better. That second sentence is the whole campaign.

By the time she reached Flushing Meadows, the getting-better had hardened into something you could knock on. A bold Nike kit drew the usual pile-on; the internet reached for its ugliest words, the ones that have nothing to do with tennis. Sabalenka reached for a shrug. “I love that it’s different. I love that this outfit is bold,” she said. “So who cares about people, right? All that matters for me is that I love it.” Same woman, different weather.

Here is why that shift is the story and not a sidebar. Sabalenka’s game has never wanted for power; her forehand can end a point other players are still trying to build. What has undone her in the biggest moments has always lived in the space between the ears — the tightening grip, the self-blame, the sense of a stadium leaning toward her failure. A player who has genuinely stopped auditioning for approval is a far more dangerous defending champion than one who is still flinching at the sound of her own name.

The field around her is not doing her any favors. The women who beat her on a given week are all in the building, and a New York crowd will adopt its darling and it will not always wear her colors. On the men’s side, Carlos Alcaraz drags his own freight of expectation as the defending champion, round after round. None of that is new. What’s new is that Sabalenka seems to have decided none of it is her problem to solve.

She was never going to win this thing by being liked. Champions who three-peat are not the ones the room is rooting for; they are the ones who stop noticing the room. The version of Sabalenka who wept over strangers’ cruelty in the spring could beat almost anyone on talent and still lose to the occasion. The version who says “who cares” and means it is the one built to survive a second Tuesday, when the crowd turns and the forehand tightens and the only voice worth hearing is the one inside the lines.

Her defense opens against Camila Osorio of Colombia, the first step on a road to a third straight title in New York. The tennis will decide whether the power holds under pressure, the way it always does. The temperament has already answered the harder question.

The haters spent a season trying to climb inside Aryna Sabalenka’s head. They may have handed her the tournament’s biggest gift without meaning to: they finally taught her to lock the door.

Tags: US Open, Aryna Sabalenka, Carlos Alcaraz, Camila Osorio, Grand Slams