Aryna Sabalenka is once again back with her usual charm in interviews! Her 2024 season has been anything but smooth. Coping with the demise of her ex-partner in March, losing to Iga Swiatek in consecutive clay-court matches, or even dealing with her shoulder injuries, the Belarusian player, who started the season with her second Australian Open victory, had to endure a lot of challenges this year! Although success finally came in the form of a US Open victory, her struggles in one aspect have still remained the same—her troubles with speaking English!
Appearing for a fun interview with WTA (posted on YouTube), Aryna Sabalenka, with her usual sunny disposition, answered a series of entertaining questions! But there was a catch. The World No. 2 player had to answer all the questions, including naming apps on her phone, WTA legends, and athletes outside of tennis, within just 5 seconds! Her peers, Swiatek, Jessica Pegula, Jasmine Paolini, Coco Gauff, Emma Navarro, Paula Badosa, and Daria Kasatkina, struggled to answer the questions quickly, but it seemed that Sabalenka had one additional problem.
After the initial few questions, the interviewer asked Sabalenka to name three non-tennis player athletes, but by then Sabalenka seemed to have already given up. “There’s so many. I just cannot, like it’s so much pressure when someone counts down, like next to you,” she said initially while laughing, visibly fed up with her pace. The 26-year-old player tried once again after some time but nothing fruitful happened, compelling her to skip the question altogether and conclude, “I need like 10 hours. So, I can chill, relax, make sure I pronounce everything right.”
Sabalenka’s struggle with English is not new to fans who saw an entertaining linguistic mishap after her Cincinnati Masters victory. After the match, when she was thanking her boyfriend, Georgios Frangulis, Sabalenka mistakenly said, “Special thank you to my boyfriends… boyfriend. I said ‘Boyfriends’ oh my god, that’s my terrible English guys.” Even during the US Open pre-tournament press conference, she took an oath to improve her English skills after repeating the same mistake for the second time!
“I don’t know what’s wrong with this world, like, for the second time, I’m making this stupid mistake. Probably need to work on my English pronunciation. It’s terrible. It’s been terrible lately,” she said, reassuring her fans that her boyfriend knows that she has “only him.” Even last year, she expressed a similar problem with English, but surprisingly, English is not the only language she wanted to learn!
“I’m trying to learn English,” said Aryna Sabalenka last year
In 2023, Aryna Sabalenka stepped into the Stuttgart Open after a Miami Open quarterfinal exit, hoping to improve her results even more. She came close to winning the event, but Swiatek outclassed in the finals. However, even before the tournament started, Sabalenka appeared for a pre-tournament press conference where one interviewer asked her about her German skills. “Two-time finalist here. Stuttgart definitely suits you. How are your German skills? Maybe you learned already some German words?”
To this, Sabalenka replied by saying, “Thank you very much” in German and revealed her struggles with learning. “Ah, German. Well, Danke Schoen for this question (laughter). That’s it. I’m really struggling with English. I’m trying to learn English and then like focus on the different languages (laughter). I wish I could speak many languages, but I think it’s not my, how to say, not like a weapon but not my strong part.” Aryna Sabalenka’s ‘English’ might not be her strongest suit, but when she is on-court, her amazing tennis skills can overshadow all such struggles!