Mumbai: The highlights from Iga Swiatek’s final match go by in a blur. Significantly these of the ‘breadstick’ she was handed within the first set.
Poland’s Iga Swiatek throughout coaching. (REUTERS)
In the previous few years that the 23-year-old has dominated the ladies’s tour, the ‘Swiatek Bakery’ has grow to be frequent parlance in tennis. She has handed out bagels and breadsticks (successful units 6-0 and 6-1 respectively) virtually at will. Take into account this: from the beginning of the 2022 season until every week earlier than final 12 months’s French Open, Swiatek had received a set 6-0 or 6-1 in 49 % of her matches.
However on Court docket Centrale at Foro Italico in Rome, almost a fortnight in the past, she was overwhelmed 6-1, 7-5 by Danielle Collins within the third spherical of the Italian Open, the place she was the defending champion.
Swiatek has been bagel-ed or breadstick-ed six occasions this season, 4 in her final two competitions alone. For a participant hoping to grow to be the primary girl in over a century to win 4 consecutive titles at Roland Garros, Swiatek’s French Open buildup has not been supreme.
“This year I feel like I’m struggling a bit more with my perfectionism,” Swiatek had mentioned throughout the Italian Open. “I want to focus on being disciplined on the court and making right choices, not the choices that sometimes pop out in my head, but being really solid.”
Within the final three editions of the French Open, the battle amongst gamers was primarily about who would end runner-up to the Pole. However whereas Swiatek, who has not received a title since clinching her fifth Grand Slam title in Paris final 12 months, has struggled, her friends have taken a step up, making the ladies’s draw anyone’s sport.
The front-runner to problem Swiatek’s Parisian throne is world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka. A compulsive hard-hitter, Sabalenka has grown out of being a proficient under-achiever to a three-time Grand Slam champion.
All her achievements on the Majors although – the 2023 and 2024 Australian Open and 2024 US Open – have been on laborious courts. Conquering clay is maybe the subsequent on her bucket listing. She travels to Paris on the again of some first rate outcomes, having received the Madrid Masters for the third time in her profession.
The finalist within the Spanish capital, Coco Gauff, can be one of many main gamers within the ladies’s subject. The world No.2, now 21, has continued to develop in stature. Although she favours laborious courts, she does have clay courtroom pedigree, having received the junior French Open title in 2018, when she was solely 14, and end as runner-up in 2022.
The 2023 US Open winner, who’s the reigning WTA Finals champion, has additionally had an excellent run-up to the French Open this 12 months, with finalist finishes in Madrid and Rome.
The defeat in Italy got here by the hands of pocket dynamo Jasmine Paolini. At 29, the world No.4 Italian is a late-bloomer. 2024 was her breakthrough season. She received her largest title on the WTA 1000 occasion in Dubai in 2024, then punched above her weight to achieve the ultimate at each the French Open and Wimbledon Championships – the primary participant since Serena Williams in 2016 to take action. That very same season, she received the doubles gold medal with Sara Errani on the Paris Olympics after which led Italy to the Billie Jean King Cup title.
Typically understated, the title in Rome makes Paolini one of many prime contenders at Roland Garros.
The final time nevertheless, a event was held on the fabled Parisian clay, it was China’s Qinwen Zheng who emerged because the winner, clinching the ladies’s singles gold on Court docket Philippe Chatrier on the 2024 Olympics in August.
Throughout that run, the world No.8 even pulled off a straight-sets win over Swiatek within the semi-final, on the very floor the Pole had appeared indestructible only a month earlier. Final week, she even managed to beat Sabalenka for the primary time, after six consecutive defeats to the Belarusian. And with it, she gave her sign of intent.
Gauff, nevertheless, has arguably a better run to the ultimate. Within the American’s half of the draw, she might face the likes of 2021 French Open Barbora Krejcikova, sixth seed Mirra Andreeva and compatriots Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys. In the meantime, Sabalenka, Swiatek, Paolini and Zheng are all within the different half.
The challengers to Swiatek’s crown have thrown down the gauntlet. However it’s to not say that the Pole goes away that simply. By her personal requirements, she has not had an excellent season.
However she has received 27 off 36 matches, reached 4 semi-finals and three quarter-finals. She has additionally handed out 17 bagels and breadsticks this season.