Aryna Sabalenka’s Australian Open championship is about persistence. It’s about the value of confronting, not ignoring, problems.

And, to hear Sabalenka tell it, it’s as much about the way she reconfigured her self-belief as it is about the way she reconfigured her serving technique. “I always had this weird feeling when people would come to me and ask for a signature. I would be like, Why are you asking for (my) signature? I’m nobody. I don’t have a grand slam.’”

Sabalenka said that last phrase no longer applied because she had defeated Elena Rybakina 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 in the final on Saturday. “I just changed how I feel. I have started respecting myself more,” Sabalenka continued, between celebratory sips of bubbly. “I have started to understand that I’m here because I work so hard and I’m actually a good player.”

That goes a long way, especially when the going gets tough under the bright lights and on the big stage of a major tournament. “Every time I had a tough moment on court,” the 24-year-old from Belarus said, “I was just reminding myself that I’m good enough to handle all this.”

There were plenty of those moments over the years — and against Rybakina, who won Wimbledon last year and was the first woman in 22 years to beat three past grand slam champions to get to the Australian Open final.

Then, there was the double-fault on the very first point, the double-fault nearly two and a half hours later on Sabalenka’s first of what would be four match points, the loss of the first set, and so on. But Sabalenka’s retooled serve ended up producing 17 aces, more than enough to outweigh seven double-faults, and her 51 winners helped propel her to three pivotal breaks.

Czech duo best

Katerina Siniakova and Barbora Krejcikova annexed the women’s doubles title with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Japan’s Shuko Aoyama and Ena Shibahara on Sunday. It was the duo’s seventh grand slam doubles title.