Sabalenka had also been the top seed and favourite at Wimbledon, where Anisimova surprised her in a three-set semifinal to reach her first major final.
The American then powered into a second at Flushing Meadows with wins over Iga Swiatek and Naomi Osaka in the quarters and semis respectively. When she faced Sabalenka in the final, she was bidding to knock over, in succession, a trio of superstars – who had won a collective 13 Grand Slam titles – to earn her first.
But Sabalenka was ready for her this time, having revealed she loved revenge matches.
The world No.1 played a tactically- and emotionally-astute match, keeping her unforced errors low and extending rallies with controlled aggression, while accepting Anisimova could and would go big. The American did, finishing with 22 winners to Sabalenka’s 13, but almost double the number of unforced errors.
Anisimova also looked flat in patches of the match but came alive at certain junctures, most significantly when Sabalenka served for the title at 6-3, 5-4. Anisimova extracted an overhead error from Sabalenka at 30-30 on her way to breaking, a three-game run that put her ahead 6-5 and ignited the crowd.
“There was, like, two moments where I was really close to lose control, but at that moment I told myself, ‘No, it’s not going to happen. It’s absolutely OK’,” revealed Sabalenka, who entered the match 3-6 in nine career meetings against Anisimova.
“That’s what you expect in the final, that the player is going to fight back and will do her best to get the win. So I was just trying to focus one step at a time.”
When Sabalenka held in the next game to send the second set to a tiebreak, the odds were stacked in her favour. She’d already won a women’s Open-era record of 18 consecutive tiebreaks, equalling the men’s record held by Andy Roddick.
As Roddick watched from the stands along with other tennis legends including Billie Jean King, Tracy Austin and trophy-presenter Chris Evert, Sabalenka took sole ownership of the record, clinching another major title in the process.