San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
CLAY QUEEN SWIATEK DIGS DEEP
At 22, she wins third French; Djokovic to play for 23rd major
When the near-classic of a final ended with the mirthless sound of a second fault smacking the net, the player forging a dynasty dropped her racket, put her face in her hands, crouched elbowsto-knees and took on a look of surprise. It did look curious — for her.
Maybe Iga Swiatek had learned something new about herself Saturday as she claimed her third French Open title in four years — this one by 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 — and her fourth Grand Slam title all told.
Today, Novak Djokovic will be seeking his record 23rd men’s Grand Slam title in the tournament’s finale, playing Casper Ruud. Djokovic, a 36-year-old from Serbia, wants to break a tie with rival Rafael Nadal for the most major championships by a man. Another triumph also would make him the first man in tennis history with at least three trophies from each Slam.
Swiatek completed her French Open trio, but it wasn’t easy.
As she led 6-2, 3-0 and then trailed 2-6, 7-5, 2-0 against the oft-brilliant Karolina Muchova, Swiatek did something her sport did not ask of her much at Grand Slams as she rocketed to No. 1 (and has remained there 62 weeks so far). She won the kinds of points so big they would scare the heck out of most.
“I suddenly felt, you know, tired,” she said with the latest installment of “Poland Garros” in the books, its subject still barely 22.
After all, her romps through Roland Garros draws in 2020, 2022 and most of 2023 had lacked for detours. She won all 14 sets in 2020, 14 of 15 in 2022 (when she lost a fourth-round tiebreak set to Qinwen Zheng, found it intolerable and finished up 6-0, 6-2) and coming into Saturday all of them in 2023, factoring in an opponent’s retirement at 5-1 in the fourth round. Given her 6-4, 6-4 loss to Maria Sakkari in the 2021 quarterfinals, Swiatek has gone 24-1 here this decade (discounting the retirement match).
None of it had sent her to the heights of rubber-set hell as did Saturday — to a game returning serve at a precarious 3-4, to another precarious juncture when things reached 30-all at 4-4, to a more precarious juncture with a break point against her at 4-4, to a closing return game when she slammed precise shots all over the place. The emphatic point she crowned with an emphatic backhand volley at deuce in the 3-4 game epitomized her intent.
“In the third set, I didn’t want to have any regrets about the second,” Swiatek said. “I just kind of looked forward, and I said to myself: ‘Okay, you know what? I’m just going to give it all.’ No thinking. No, like, I don’t know, analyzing. Just play my game, use my intuition, and that really helped.” She told of a knack champions do master: “Honestly, after so many ups and downs, I kind of stopped thinking about the score.”
Such talk seemed all the more fitting when considering her opponent, who had become a revelation to the Roland Garros crowd with the variety of delights that come off her racket. Fans sometimes gasped at Muchova’s shots as if aware of their degree of difficulty. “I’m really struck with your variety and form,” Swiatek told Muchova during the trophy ceremony, “and I really hope we’re going to have many more finals.”