I want to quit tennis: Sabalenka drops the bombshell after stunning exit from the French Open

First came the chair. Aryna Sabalenka dived into it, red Nike shirt, red eyes, the attitude of someone trying very hard to hold something together. Court Philippe-Chatrier was just watching the world no losing 10 games in a row – including the final set 6-0 – Diana Shnaider, the 25th seed playing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinal. Roland Garros, one of the majors that has always been deadlocked, has done it again. This time it seemed to take something with it.

The press conference that followed hardly needed a question.

“No thoughts, no emotions,” Sabalenka said. “I want to quit tennis immediately. We’ll see in a few days. Hopefully I can get back on track – mentally.”

Sabalenka never hid, but this was something else, unguarded in a way that made the room uncomfortable.

She entered this tournament as the last Grand Slam champion standing in the draw, her path seemingly cleared by the early exit of Iga Swiatek. If Sabalenkova ever had a year to end her barren run on clay and grass — four major titles, all on hard courts, two Australian Opens and two US Opens — this was it. She came through the draw in good shape. And in the second and a half set on Wednesday, she looked like a player on the right side of history: 6-3, 5-2, two match points.

Then came the hole.

“I don’t know when was the last time I lost ten games in a row,” she said when asked what she was trying to do to slow the collapse.

“I think I mentally went into a very deep, deep dark hole over there and I just couldn’t mentally get back on track.

SABALENKA AIMED AT THE RAGE ROOM

Body language in court suggested that. There was a moment in the third set when she stood still and screamed after losing a single point, her composure already gone and the scoreboard becoming something to be endured rather than mastered. By the end, she accumulated 57 unforced errors. Shnaider, playing in her first major quarterfinal, simply kept the ball in play and watched.

When a reporter noted the crowd’s appreciation for her honesty and asked about her recovery plans, Sabalenka paused. A long pause.

“I honestly don’t know. I don’t think I do.” Another pause. “I don’t know.”

Then, almost in spite of herself, a flash. She mentioned the rage rooms – one of those places where you pay to break things – and said she planned to spend the next day destroying everything in sight. She couldn’t tell if it would help.

“Well, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, I guess. I’ll figure out the situation at some point and we’ll come back tougher. By the way, I’ve just figured out how I can beat it—one of those rooms you walk into and break everything. I’ll probably spend all day tomorrow destroying things in there. Maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t,” she said.

It was the most Sabalenko moment possible: raw despair, then a shrug, then dark comedy.

But underneath that lies the real problem she has now named herself. She didn’t flinch when asked directly about clay and grass and whether the weight of never having won on those surfaces started weighing on her.

“Maybe I focus too much on the fact that I’ve never won a Slam on them and maybe it makes me overthink things, I get overly emotional at times. I’m so tired of losing like that – not in the best way, just because I’ve been over the top.”

Last year, it was the French Open final against Coco Gauffa, who surrendered in a similar fashion. This year, the quarterfinals, where she led by a set and a double break. The surface changes. The shape of the loss does not.

She will come back. It always is. But Wednesday in Paris felt like more than a bad afternoon—it felt like a reckoning that was just beginning.

– The end

Issued by:

Akshay Ramesh

Published on:

03 Jun 2026 21:04 IST