“I was crying half of the time, because I thought that I looked ugly, not prepared, and this is such a beautiful moment,” she said on Friday. “I stopped everything, and I asked the videographer and the photographer to make sure that my face is not there, just the ring, and, I don’t know, side views and from the back, just so you guys wouldn’t be shocked by the way I looked.
“In the end, it looked better,” she clarified later on. “It looked real, it looked like it was a real surprise. Honestly, I’m super happy with the way they all did it to me.”
Sabalenka came within one match of the Sunshine Double in 2025, reaching the BNP Paribas Open final and winning the Miami Open. In a stacked section of the draw that features Iva Jovic, Naomi Osaka, Victoria Mboko, Emma Raducanu, and Amanda Anisimova, the top seed will look to sparkle throughout the Sunshine Swing with Jaqueline Cristian standing between her and the fourth round.
