Watch the bizarre moment a furious Aryna Sabalenka throws a RACKET at her coach in the stands at the US Open… before turning match around to beat US star Madison Keys
- Aryna Sabalenka was losing her cool as she was close to being eliminated
- But she recovered to move onto the finals of the US Open vs. Coco Gauff
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Aryna Sabalenka ended Thursday night as a happy US Open finalist, but she cut a much angrier figure a couple hours before as her match vs. Madison Keys appeared to spiral out of control.
After losing the first set 6-0, Sabalenka volleyed a return into the net to fall into a 2-1 deficit in the second set.
Sabalenka slammed her racket after losing the game and grabbed a new one her coach had left for her, but attempted to throw the original one back into the stands.
The attempt failed, with the Belarusian throwing the racket short and it bouncing off her coach’s hand onto the ground.
‘Even that comes up short,’ ESPN broadcaster Chris Fowler joked.
Aryna Sabalenka recovered from losing the first set 6-0 to beat Madison Keys in three sets
Keys lost the final two sets via tiebreak, putting an end to her tournament in the semifinals
From there, Sabalenka completely turned her performance around as she battled to tiebreak wins in the second and third sets to advance to the final.
And she was able to see the humor in her earlier behavior after putting herself just a match away from winning her second Slam.
‘They’re fired, they’re not my team anymore,’ she told ESPN afterwards, according to the New York Post.
‘It’s all their fault. No, no, no. … We spoke that if I need to throw those emotions, I have to do it. Otherwise, I’ll just eat myself from the inside. So I was just like yelling, screaming, swearing to them.
‘They know I still love them. It’s for the better, it’s for a good reason.’
Sabalenka will have a day to recover from her grueling 2-and-a-half hour match vs. Keys before facing Coco Gauff in the final.