Some players are born for the big stage.
While others may perform more consistently week in, week out, Aliaksandra Sasnovich is a woman who comes alive when the stakes are raised. It’s a trait the now 28-year-old first showed on the ITF Tour when she was just starting out; she won 11 finals out of 11, including one over former world No 2 Anett Kontaveit of Estonia.
Although she’s come off second-best in four finals on the women’s tour since, the Belarussian seems to respond best when there’s a big name across the net from her, just as she did when she beat Petra Kvitova, a two-time previous champion, in the first round at Wimbledon in 2018.
Names don’t come much bigger than Serena Williams, Sasnovich’s opponent in the first round at Wimbledon in 2021, a match that saw the American seven-time champion quit through injury with the scores tied at 3-3. No one wants to win a match through the retirement of their opponent but for Sasnovich, even being on the same court as the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion was the fulfilment of a dream.
“I was happy to play against her,” she said. “I think it's luck to play against Serena. She's a great champion. She has a lot of Slams.
“It was a dream of my dad. He dreamed for eight years in a row, he just wrote me before the match, that I would play with Serena in Wimbledon…Of course I wanted to play the full match, but it's tennis. It happens.”
Seeing Sasnovich’s name next to theirs must send shivers down the spines of her opponents. Take Emma Raducanu, the Briton who came out of nowhere – and through qualifying – to win the US Open in 2021. The first time Raducanu played again after her victory in New York was in Indian Wells the following month and she was well beaten by Sasnovich.
So when the Briton found herself up against Sasnovich in the second round of the French Open in 2022, she would have known what was coming. Sasnovich duly won in three sets, chalking up another big win. She then beat the former world No 1 Angelique Kerber of Germany in the next round before losing to fellow Head player Martina Trevisan in the last 16.
One of three Belarusian women to make the third round at the US Open in 2022, a first for the nation, Sasnovich has also excelled playing for her country. The right-hander won five of her six matches as Belarus reached the Fed Cup final for their first time in their history in 2017.
It was Victoria Azarenka who put Belarusian tennis on the map, reaching the world No 1 ranking and winning two Grand Slam titles in 2012 and 2013. Aryna Sabalenka’s exploits in recent years have added to the feeling that this is a golden generation for women’s tennis in Belarus.
Sasnovich said Azarenka had been an inspiration for her. “I watched a lot of her matches when I was young,” she said in Indian Wells in 2021. “I was always supporting her when I was young. It was nice to watch – nice character, nice game.”
And Sasnovich is proud to be an inspiration to younger players coming through. “I think a lot of young kids start to play tennis because of Vika or Aryna or me,” she said. “I want more people from Belarus be on tour. We have a strong school, strong players. It's nice.”
WORDS BY DANIELLE ROSSINGH