PARIS – I thought it would be a short workday, and I was correct.
Iga Swiatek, the Polish perfectionist, wastes no time or opportunities, particularly on clay.
With another French Open women’s final quickly in the books, I headed for my bicycle but could not help looking around the grounds at Roland Garros on my way out and thinking: the Iga statue could go there, or maybe there, or even better there.
That is, of course, premature. Four French Open singles titles is still a world away from Rafael Nadal’s 14.
“No, we’re not going to talk about Nadal yet,” said Justine Henin, referring to his record.
Henin, who retired young, remains one of the most sensible people in tennis, and she is also a four-time French Open singles champion and the last woman before Swiatek to win three times in a row at Roland Garros.
She knows first-hand that such dominance can prove ephemeral, that injuries and shifting priorities can change the equation. So can the emergence of a new-paradigm talent: keep an eye on Mirra Andreeva, a semifinalist here at 17 this year.
But it was still very easy to let the mind race ahead as Swiatek steamrolled to a 6-2, 6-1 victory in Saturday’s final over Jasmine Paolini, an endearing but overmatched Italian.
Paolini, who will be ranked No. 7 on Monday, came out with the right attitude, striking groundstrokes with conviction and looking comfortable in the spotlight in her first major final.
Like everyone in women’s tennis, she and her coach Renzo Furlan surely took a long look at footage of Naomi Osaka’s near-victory over Swiatek in the second round. Team Paolini’s conclusions seemed sound. Paolini would try to rush Swiatek on her forehand, attack her second serve and give the Pole a steady diet of kick serves and higher-bouncing balls to her two-handed backhand.
The plan worked for three games as Paolini broke Swiatek’s serve to take a 2-1 lead. But Swiatek showed no signs of panic.
She closed her eyes, focused on controlling her breathing and internal narrative and proceeded to compartmentalize, closing the drawer on what had just happened and opening another one. She expeditiously broke Paolini back at love and went on to win 10 of the next 11 games, imposing a rhythm that her fellow finalist could not sustain.
I will spare you further match details out of sympathy for Paolini.
“Ruthless,” Henin said on French television, using the French term impitoyable. “And we can imagine that Iga will not stop at four. I hope she goes further than I did. She has the means at her disposal to do it. We can’t say what will happen for her or her opponents. But if she keeps this desire, this professionalism, rigor and capacity to concentrate she is well on her way to win others.”
Paolini certainly looked and sounded like she was dealing with a higher power.
“I never played a player that has this intensity before in my life,” Paolini said.
Aryna Sabalenka, Swiatek’s much more extroverted rival, is certainly not far off. She is relentless in a different manner: filling a court with sound and fury as she propels herself into her big-bang shots. Swiatek’s soundtrack is much more subtle, something better suited to deep work, even if her tennis is no less intimidating. The right word, I think, is urgency. What she wants as soon as possible is total control: of the point and of her emotions, which she knows from experience can get the best of her.
She goes full tilt with full focus: taking away time and space from the opposition with her depth, pace and defense. If you want a sense of her commitment to detail, just watch her feet and only her feet for a few games.
“Her little steps, her adjustment, her precision, it’s all perfect,” said Alizé Cornet, the French star who retired at this tournament. “She really is the reine de Roland Garros. She deserves this.”
No debate there. The only thing that needs work on clay are her trophy acceptance speeches: unstructured rambles that, unlike her groundstrokes, could use a bit of polish. But on days like Saturday, she makes the game look easy, which, of course, it is not.
“It’s no accident,” Henin said. “There is huge effort behind it. She’s worked on the mental game. It can seem simple what she’s doing out there, but imagine the day-to-day discipline it requires. It’s important not to forget that.”
Henin hit her backhand with one hand, not two, and was slighter of build. But Henin, the daughter of a teacher, can surely relate not only to Swiatek’s bookish ways and introverted personality but to her no-nonsense approach to training and match play. As nimble as Henin was on her feet, there was nothing light about watching her compete. The same applies to Swiatek.
I spent a couple of days with her and her team at Roland Garros before she started her three-year run in 2022 and was struck by how professional, intentional and systematic they were. They had studied Nadal to be sure but also studied Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic and recognized the value of getting away from the tournament site and the pressures of the profession on a regular basis.
Green space on off days is key so that she can dominate on the red stuff when it matters. You cannot be as intense as Swiatek is in every match if you have not given your body and mind some downtime. It is a balancing act to be sure, but the results speak for themselves. She is now a dazzling 22-4 in tour-level singles finals and is the first woman since Serena Williams in 2013 to sweep the clay-court titles in Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros.
Before the swing Swiatek said she looked at her phone and all the weeks that she was going to spend away from home and thought, “It looks crazy, how am I going to survive that?”
“But here I am,” she said on Saturday. “Honestly, I think I learned that if I enjoy the life off the court -- and I really enjoyed being in Madrid, Rome and here – it helps me also to be fresh on the court. So, I think I had, like, less drama compared to last year, and I could really just enjoy life, so then I felt more energy on the court.”
A year ago, she lost to Sabalenka in the Madrid final and to Elena Rybakina in the Rome quarterfinals before retaking command of the clay in Paris. This year she lost indoors to Rybakina on clay in Stuttgart and then went undefeated the rest of the way with 19 straight victories.
But the run was hardly drama-free. She had to save three match points to beat Sabalenka in last month’s final in Madrid: the most compelling WTA match of the season. She then had to save a match point against Osaka in the second round here.
Osaka surprisingly dominated play for long stretches. She might have won in straight sets if she had been able to convert a set point in the first set. But after losing the opener in a tiebreaker, Osaka won 11 of 14 games to take a 5-2 lead in the third set. She was two points away from victory at 0-30 on Swiatek serve, then lost four consecutive points. Serving for the match at 5-3, Osaka was up 30-15 and struck a first serve that Swiatek blocked back short. Osaka moved in for the put-away with plenty of open court available but, feeling the pressure, missed a short forehand into the net.
That was the first shot that changed this French Open, and the second came when Osaka held a match point later in the game. Swiatek ripped a crosscourt backhand return off a second serve that Osaka could reach but not control.
Swiatek went on to win 7-6 (1), 1-6, 7-5 and after losing those 17 games, she dropped just 17 games the rest of the way in five matches.
Such dominance helps explain why the French Open organizers remain hesitant to put Swiatek, the world No. 1, into the night-session slot, which features just one match. Swiatek is hardly clamoring for the assignment, preferring her daytime routine, but a victory in less than an hour would not be sufficient value for money. It remains safer to go with a men’s best-of-five-set singles match even if it is not the right signal to be sending on equal opportunity (all 11 night matches were men’s matches this year).
As Jeff Sackmann at Tennis Abstract has noted, the 11 games Swiatek lost in the final four rounds tie the record for the fewest allowed in the second week of a women’s major in the Open era. Swiatek shares that mark with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, the friendly former archrivals who were, quite fittingly, part of the trophy ceremony on Saturday.
“She’s got the ideal game for clay,” Navratilova said to L’Equipe. “Her groundstrokes are perfect, her technique is impeccable, and she moves great. On clay her forehand bounces high with all that topspin. If you try to take it early, it’s very risky, and if you back up, wow. On both sides, her preparation is such that you can’t read which way she’s going to go: crosscourt or down the line. I would not have wanted to play her.”
With four French Open titles at age 23, Swiatek’s logical target is Evert’s women’s record of seven French Open singles titles. Nadal’s 14 – and the shimmering statue at Roland Garros that go with them – is a speck on the horizon for now. And yet the comparison is increasingly irresistible with both relying on that whipping forehand and rock-solid two-handed backhand.
It is also about the mood.
“Iga plays each point as if her life depended on it,” Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena’s former coach, said on French TV.
Sound familiar? It should and like Nadal at the same stage, Swiatek is also committed to expanding her range and skillset. She has changed her serve this year, abbreviating the motion to generate more pop. She has made progress in transition: showing more touch and confidence at the net although she was only 5 for 11 up there on Saturday.
She will need that serve and those spiffed-up volleys at Wimbledon, where she has not made it past the quarterfinals. She has yet to win a tour title on grass, but she is already a multi-surface threat who has won more titles on hardcourts (12) than clay (10) and won the US Open in 2022.
If Nadal could adjust his game to win Wimbledon twice, I see no reason why Swiatek cannot do the same (She already has won the Wimbledon girls title). The footing and directional shifts are challenging to be sure, as is the slightly lower bounce. Slice, which can pay big dividends on grass, is not Swiatek’s strength or preference. She would rather slide with an open stance into a wide ball and rip a two-handed backhand. But she is a supreme, explosive athlete, and such supreme athletes tend to thrive at Wimbledon (see Navratilova and the Williams sisters or Carlos Alcaraz just last year).
Whatever the outcome, it will be much more suspenseful to watch Swiatek try to expand her comfort zone with the odds against her. The grasscourt season reshuffles the cards, but unlike a normal year, this is not farewell to the clay for Swiatek. Body willing, she will be back in Paris for the Olympics in late July, following the path of her father who was an Olympian in rowing for Poland.
It will be best-of-three again on the Roland Garros clay. Don’t think Swiatek has not been closing her eyes, controlling her breathing and planning for it.
CC
P.S. American Coco Gauff, beaten soundly by Swiatek in the semifinals of the French Open singles, won her first Grand Slam doubles title on Sunday, teaming with Czech doubles stalwart Katerina Siniakova to defeat Paolini and Sara Errani 7-6 (5), 6-3.
Gauff, who won the US Open on her own last year, is now a major singles and doubles champion at age 20.
It's hard to believe that Świątek won't win Wimbledon sooner or later. She has the killer instinct of a shark and could be the poster-girl for the Aggressor Doctrine, and people like that have a way of making necessary adjustments. I'd run away from her if I saw her in a dark alley. Poor little Paolini had about as much chance against her in the French final as a PT-boat taking on a battleship. Of course PT-boats have sunk battleships—a tiny little Italian torpedo boat sank the Austrian battleship Szent Istvan in the Adriatic in 1918 in WWI (you can watch a video of it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8EvOg9vKqU), and U.S. Admiral Jesse Oldendorff's PT-boats sank Japanese Admiral Shoji Nishimura's battleships in the Surigao Strait in 1944 in WWII, but that is rare. So go figure.
She’s phenomenal; Rybakina, who gives Swiatek fits on any surface had a very surprising, almost odd loss to Paolini in semis….and no idea what illness Sabalenka contracted in losing to Andreeva…she was clearly not herself which is unfortunate after so much prep in clay court season….either way, Iga reigns…onto grass!