“I was just too pissed with myself”: Aryna Sabalenka evaluates her performance after Indian Wells defeat

Aryna Sabalenka evaluated her performance in the Indian Wells final, where she fell to 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva. For the second time this year, Sabalenka was left on the doorstep of a title, after also losing earlier this year at the Australian Open to Madison Keys.

The world No. 1 has yet to win a title this year, and, like in Australia, she arrived as the favorite to win the trophy. However, she faced an inspired Andreeva, who claimed her second consecutive WTA 1000 title and extended her streak to 12 straight victories.

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Despite Andreeva’s impressive performance—which Sabalenka didn’t hesitate to praise during the award ceremony—the three-time Grand Slam champion decided to focus her evaluation on the mistakes she made. The Belarusian ruled out being surprised by Andreeva's level on Sunday.

“No, not really. Honestly, it was me against me. I mean, I made a lot of unforced errors on important points, and I just let her play a little bit better,” she said. “At the beginning, everything was going quite straightforward, and then I just made a couple of mistakes. She kind of like believed in herself. After that, I started playing much worse, and I was just trying to find my rhythm back but it didn't work this time.”

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Sabalenka started with a solid first set in the match, which allowed her to lead 6-2 in just half an hour. Everything seemed to be on track for Sabalenka, but a break early in the second set in favor of Andreeva began to shift the momentum. The Russian became more confident as Sabalenka started to fade and make more mistakes.

“Maybe sometimes you're focusing on the wrong things,” she said about the final. “But for me, today, for example, I was just too pissed with myself, because I think, yeah, it shouldn’t be the way I finished and I was just pissed with myself.”

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“I should have just thrown that aggression on that side instead of being too much, too hard on myself. So I wasn't really caring about what she was doing. I knew what she was going to do, and nothing really surprised me. It's more just about me controlling my anger a little bit better.”

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