Sabalenka Comes Back to Beat Muchova in WTA Finals Opener
Aryna Sabalenka beat Karolina Muchova 7-6 (7-2), 7-5 on Monday 9 November in her first match at the WTA Finals, the season-ending event for the world's leading women players. Sabalenka, the world No. 2, is making her sixth appearance at the event and is still looking for her first season-ending title. BBC Sport reported the result.
The match was not smooth. Sabalenka trailed with a break in both sets, meaning Muchova had won a game against Sabalenka's serve, and she levelled each time. A break is a chance to take a player's serve, and winning one often decides who controls a set.
The first set went to a tiebreak, a short game played when the score reaches 6-6. The first player to seven points, by a margin of two, wins it. Sabalenka won that tiebreak 7-2, then closed out the second set 7-5.
Her serve was far from perfect. She hit seven double faults, which are serves that miss both target boxes and hand the opponent a free point. She also hit four aces, serves the opponent cannot touch. Only 59% of her first serves landed, but when they did, she won 33 of 44 points behind them. That is the kind of trade-off that can keep a match close while still letting a player win.
Sabalenka's story this year has been one of near misses and strong runs. She entered the WTA Finals with a 47-10 win-loss record for 2026 and had already won three titles: Brisbane, Indian Wells and Miami. Her most recent title before this week came in Miami in March. She has also lost the Australian Open and US Open finals to Elena Rybakina, the world No. 1.
Rybakina did not play this week. Yahoo Sports reported that she withdrew from the event due to a viral illness. Rybakina had won the WTA Finals in 2025, beating Sabalenka 6-3, 7-6 (0) in the final, and this year she has been the player Sabalenka most often had to beat to win the big titles.
Muchova also has a history with the top of the rankings. In January, she ended Rybakina's 13-match winning run with a three-set win in the Brisbane quarterfinals, then went on to face Sabalenka in the semifinals there. She had sat out the Ningbo and Osaka tournaments before coming to the season finale.
The WTA Finals is split into groups, so one win does not settle who reaches the knockout rounds. Still, Sabalenka has started with a result that shows she can recover from behind. For a player who has come close so often, that is the lesson of the day: the match was lost in the first set and won in the tiebreak.
