Tennis star Aryna Sabalenka celebrated winning her third Grand Slam singles title, and her first at the US Open, with boyfriend Georgios Frangulis.
“Im in love with the Queen of NY ,” Frangulis, 36, wrote via Instagram on Sunday, September 8, alongside a carousel of photos of the couple celebrating the 26-year-old tennis player’s championship win.
Sabalenka won 7-5 against American tennis player Jessica Pegula in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday, September 7. In one photo, Belarus-born Sabalenka and Frangulis shared a kiss as they posed together with her championship trophy. Frangulis also included a video of Sabalenka falling to the ground and covering her face as she won her championship match.
”Oh, my God. I’m speechless right now,” Sabalenka said of her win, per ESPN. “So many times, I thought I was so close to get a US Open title. It’s been a dream of mine. Finally, I got this beautiful trophy. It means a lot.”
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Sabalenka’s win at the US Open came after she opened up last month about the death of her ex-boyfriend, hockey player Konstantin Koltsov. Kolstov died of an apparent suicide in March. He was 42. He and Sabalenka were first linked in 2021 when they went Instagram official, but they were no longer together by the time he died.
“Once, I lost my father and tennis helped me to go through that loss,” Sabalenka shared in an interview with The Guardian published on August 21. “So at that moment [of Koltsov’s death] I thought I had to just keep going, keep playing, keep doing my thing to separate my personal life from my career life.”
She noted that she ultimately regretted choosing to focus on tennis over her own mental health. “But at the end, I would say I was struggling a lot healthwise because I didn’t stop,” she shared. “It was really emotional and really stressful, and kind of damaged my mental health at that point.”
Sabalenka also withdrew from Wimbledon earlier this year after she suffered a shoulder injury, which she now views as a positive because it forced her to take a “much needed” step back from tennis.
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“It was really sad and I was struggling a lot not to play Wimbledon, of course, but at the same time I was able to take all the benefits from the time,” she told the outlet. “I was doing a lot of rehab and treatment, but I was able to enjoy my life and my time away from tennis, and take all the good sides of not competing on tour.”
Sabalenka shared that “a better decision would have been to step back, reset and recharge, and start everything over again. But I did what I did.”
She concluded, “At the end, I paid for my decision, but I’m really glad that I have tennis in my life and it’s really helped me go through whatever and get stronger.”
