Aryna Sabalenka started off her 2024 Roland Garros campaign with a commanding win over Erika Andreeva.
Not too long ago, the Belarusian downed Mirra Andreeva at the Madrid Open, and now she outplayed her older sister. The younger sister is the better player right now, and she certainly kept it closer compared to her older sister Erika.
The match largely went as expected because the second seed is just playing too strong right now. She just made back-to-back finals in Madrid and Rome, losing only to the Queen of Clay, Iga Swiatek.
Her performance was as dominant as that of Iga Swiatek and Elena Rybakina, including Coco Gauff, who are some of the favorites to win it all, and showed that in the first round.
The first set was just a carbon copy of many of Sabalenka’s matches, where her tremendous power overwhelms opponents easily. Very few players can match her power from the baseline like that, and Andreeva certainly wasn’t one of them in this match.
The world no. 2 totaled 13 winners compared to 2 by the Russian player, and that was obviously not going to cut it. The score was 6-1 for the Belarusian in the opening set.
Andreeva showed a bit more fight in the second set. She served much better, while Sabalenka struggled with her own serve a little bit. She also missed more, but none of that really threatened her superiority.
She took an early break in the second set and held comfortably for the rest of the match despite some chances here and there from Andreeva. The final score was 6-1, 6-2 for the Belarusian, who looked as strong as ever.