Swiatek aiming to extend rule to grass
On the first Tuesday of Wimbledon, the Centre Court schedule is traditionally led by the defending champion from the women’s singles. This year, in the absence of the recently retired Ashleigh Barty, the scheduling committee will have to find an alternative. And it seems inconceivable that they will look beyond world No1 Iga Swiatek.
By lifting the French Open title on Saturday, Swiatek proved that she has the whole game in a stranglehold, establishing a level of dominance not seen since Serena Williams won four straight majors in the middle of the last decade.
This was her 35th successive victory in a sequence that dates back to February, and she has now equalled the longest winning run by any 21st century player on the WTA Tour.
But those 35 wins have come on hard courts (17) and clay (18). Grass remains a foreign field for Swiatek, even if she lifted the junior Wimbledon crown in 2018. Last year, she ran into an inspired Ons Jabeur on the second Monday, and suffered the same sort of drubbing that she has since inflicted on dozens of powerless victims.
According to Swiatek’s compatriot Wojtek Fibak – Poland’s leading player of the Seventies – “Grass will at least give some of the other players a chance against Iga, but they have to be aggressive players, peoby ple with big games such as Jabeur, Danielle Collins or Jelena Ostapenko. The only solution is to deny her rhythm, refuse to rally and hit winners with service returns. Otherwise Iga is too consistent and she will grind them down.”
Swiatek is down to play in Berlin where she will be up against one of the strongest fields assembled on the WTA Tour this year.
The change of surface is one thing that could knock this winning machine out of gear. But if she settles, the same sense of fatalism will come over the field that we saw in Paris over the past fortnight.
Asked for her feelings about starting play in that highly valued Tuesday afternoon slot, Swiatek replied: “My only thought is I want to get ready and learn how to play on grass better. I still haven’t reached the comfortable feeling on grass. With good results and good performance, other things are going to happen.”
By contrast with Coco Gauff – who finished as a runner-up in the women’s doubles yesterday to match her plate from Saturday’s singles final – the teenage Swiatek had to find her own path in a nation that was not noted as a hotbed of tennis.
Her father Tomasz was a rower who completed at the Seoul Olympics, and she inherited plentiful physical gifts: broad shoulders, explosive movement and apparently limitless stamina. “My journey from the beginning is basically what my dad thought was the best,” Swiatek said. “He made really good choices or bad choices sometimes, but it wasn’t like I had 10 people around me, telling us what to do.”
The result was an idiosyncratic but incredibly effective game, built around a forehand that generates astonishing power from a short, sharp backswing. Although Swiatek is right-handed, she otherwise comes across as the nearest equivalent to Rafael Nadal, who also enjoys his best results on clay. It is worth noting that Nadal found the shift from high-bouncing brick dust to slick, low English turf to be a strain.
Even so, his overall mastery was still so awe-inspiring he managed to do the Channel double (winning Roland Garros and Wimbledon back to back) in 2008 and 2010. Over the next five weeks, Swiatek will do her best to match him.