It was early in the second set when the television cameras on the U.K. broadcast started glitching and freezing, leaving Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios’ self-styled ‘Battle of the Sexes’ in Dubai behind an interstitial.
After a couple of minutes and a few more isolated interruptions, the broadcast resumed, with similar problems on the U.S. broadcast on the Tennis Channel. The women’s world No. 1 and the 2022 Wimbledon men’s singles finalist, who had spent the lead-up eliding criticism of the event’s impact on women’s tennis and the sport at large in favor of a focus on entertainment value, played on. But the show that they promised never arrived, and what could have been a tragedy proved to be more of a farce.
Kyrgios largely junk-balled his way to a 6-3, 6-3 win, despite a mini-Sabalenka revival in the second set that was largely conducted off camera due to technical issues, at least on the BBC.
This was the scenario that women’s tennis and sports feared: a loss for the best player in the world to someone who has played seven matches in three years, is currently ranked No. 672, was playing with limited intensity and visibly sweating, and managing himself physically after less than half an hour. Were the match anybody’s first experience of women’s tennis, which just played out a banner season in which five different players won its five biggest titles, they would have been left underwhelmed and bemused.
“I think it was a great level,” Sabalenka said on court afterward, before adding in a news conference that she “did not understand how people were able to find something negative in this event.”
“I think for the WTA, I think I just showed … I played great tennis, it was an entertaining match, yes he won this match but I showed a great tennis, it wasn’t like it was 6-0, 6-0.
“Pretty big people were messaging me, wishing me all the best … I feel like we just brought more attention to our sport and I don’t see how it can be bad.”
Kyrgios’ ability to accelerate when needed under pressure, compared to Sabalenka’s larger number of full-throttle shots, may yet live long enough in the memory to let the downside that Sabalenka has vociferously denied exists to persist. But a flat atmosphere in Dubai, in front of a stadium built to hold 17,000 that had a whole upper level of seating closed off, deflated the weight of history that the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ name purported to bring to proceedings.
On the tennis side, Sabalenka suffered more with the one-serve rule than Kyrgios, hitting five faults to one for the 30-year-old Australian, but was able to outhit him in the backhand exchanges. The adjusted court, with nine percent less space for Kyrgios to hit the ball into, offered Sabalenka more angles to exploit but let Kyrgios play within his power, too, accelerating when he needed it.
Kyrgios and Sabalenka, 27, — who are both represented by the Evolve agency, whose co-founder Stuart Duguid said that the high-profile match would be a “good thing for women’s tennis” during an interview ahead of the event — trash-talked and bantered with each other throughout. But it largely went unheard, because unlike at exhibitions ahead of Grand Slams, they were not mic’d up. There were no on-court interviews, even during the special timeouts for each player, so there was no window into their mindset. Even the ceremonial hitting of signed tennis balls into the crowd, now a staple of tournaments the world over, was replaced by the master of ceremonies running around with a carrier bag.
The match just happened, punctuated by the arrival of Brazilian soccer legends Kaka and Ronaldo, and a slightly excruciating dance break in which Sabalenka did the Macarena while Kyrgios chatted on the sidelines.
“It truly is a spectacle,” Kyrgios, whose presence on the court at all was also criticized, said when it was over. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to common assault of his then girlfriend Chiara Passari two years earlier, before the charge was dismissed in an Australian court. He has also been criticized for his commentary about women in tennis. The following year, Kyrgios was admonished for writing “second serve” under a picture of himself and another ex: fellow ATP Tour star Jannik Sinner’s by-then girlfriend, the top-40 WTA player Anna Kalinskaya.
Duguid described Kyrgios as a “friend of women’s tennis or women’s sport,” while both Sabalenka and Kyrgios declined to be interviewed ahead of the match.
In his on-court interview, Kyrgios said Sabalenka was “right there,” and that he had to “strap in” to avoid losing a match that he said “could have gone either way.” It was the opposite of that possibility that defined the run-up to the match, with Sabalenka either destined to fall to an off-form player or to beat one who could fall back on the adjusted court and lack of preparation, in a Catch-22 for women’s tennis. In a news conference at the WTA Tour Finals, she had said that a player with more preparation would leave her with fewer chances.
That put the match in opposition to the 1973 ‘Battle of the Sexes’ between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, with which it shares its name, which came at the height of the founding of the WTA Tour and the women’s movement. King, who won the match, described the Dubai contest as “not the same” in an interview with the BBC. In the end, she was proved right.