Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 2, has revealed her mental health was “damaged” in the aftermath of her ex-boyfriend’s death in March.

Konstantin Koltsov, a former international ice hockey player, died on March 18 in Florida in what was described by Miami-Dade police as “an apparent suicide” at the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort.

Sabalenka and Koltsov first got together in June 2021 but had split at the time of his death. Despite the tragic news, the Belarusian opted to play in the Miami Open but lost in the third round to Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina, smashed her racket three times in frustration and cancelled all her press conferences.

Speaking in an interview with the Guardian, the 26-year-old admitted she should have stopped playing and allowed herself to “step back, reset and recharge”.

“Once, I lost my father and tennis helped me to go through that tough loss,” she said. “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.

“But at the end I would say I was struggling a lot healthwise because I didn’t stop. It was really emotional and really stressful, and kind of damaged my mental health at that point.

“Probably, looking back right now, I would say that a better decision would have been to step back, reset and recharge, and start everything over again.”

After missing Wimbledon due to a shoulder injury and opting to skip the Paris Olympics to prepare for the North American summer hard court swing, Sabalenka heads into the US Open full of confidence following victory at the Cincinnati Open on Monday.

However, her victory over Jessica Pegula has been overshadowed by a gender pay row with men’s champion Jannik Sinner taking home £801,668 whilst Sabalenka earned just less than half of that.

With the ATP and WTA events played on the same site, at the same time and both being best-of-three set matches, Sabalenka hit out at the financial disparity and called for equal prize money in tennis.

“From the TV point of view, from the ticket selling, from every point of view, it’s unfair,” Sabalenka said. “Of course, guys are always going to be physically stronger than women but it doesn’t mean we’re not working as hard as they do. Women deserve to be paid an equal amount of money that men do.”

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