UP FOR GRABS!
Battle for title is wide open after Swiatek exit A Cornet (Fra) bt I Swiatek (Pol) (1) 6-4, 6-2
THE world was a very different — and more peaceful — place the last time Iga Swiatek last lost a tennis match.
It was mid-February in Dubai and, whatever else has been going on, amid the trivial pursuit of tennis the No1 seed from Poland has been winning ever since.
Yesterday her 37-match streak was snapped at Wimbledon by 32-year-old French veteran Alize Cornet when she was ousted 6-4, 6-2.
With Coco Gauff having been beaten earlier in the day, it left the women’s draw further denuded of big names, and there is a huge opportunity for someone out there in the coming week. Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur is the highest-ranked player remaining, while there are only two left in with experience of having won a Major, Simona Halep and Jelena Ostapenko.
Even by the open standards of the present day women’s game it looks wide open, with only two top-10 players left among the last 16.
Swiatek is the latest player to discover that winning the French Open and Wimbledon back to back is phenomenally difficult, despite having almost forgotten how to lose. Tired and sore after Paris, she did not play a preparatory tournament and admitted that she could never find the right balance between defence and attack, getting stuck somewhere in between.
By the end of this match she looked rather nonplussed about the whole idea of playing on grass.
‘Let’s just say that I didn’t feel like I’m in the best shape,’ she said. ‘So I was kind of aware that this could happen.
‘Maybe it’s not the right attitude to have, but it is like it is. I tried many things to feel better on court but it didn’t work out, that’s why I’m not even hard on myself.’
Her misfortune was to come up against someone who knows how to execute an upset at Wimbledon. In 2014, again on Court 1, Cornet defeated Serena Williams. The French player has been contemplating her future, and had a novel published earlier this year.
In the meantime she has set an admirable record for a woman making consecutive appearances in the Majors, this being her 62nd in succession, going all the way back to early 2007. In only one of those, January’s Australian Open, has she made the quarter-finals.
She described herself as maturing like fine French wine. ‘This record was something that meant a lot to me,’ she said. ‘Now making the second week while having it is even better. It shows I still have some amazing things to give.
‘Beating Iga feels like a dream. It’s crazy because it’s the same scenario as eight years ago against Serena. Third round on Court 1 against the world No1. I did it again.’
The reverie could go further, because there will not be a woman left in the fourth round who will not have thoughts of the title.
If you were looking for someone who knows how to do it then that would be 2019 champion Halep. One of the lesser known names to keep an eye on — and there are a few of them — is Elena Rybakina, of Kazakhstan.