Iga Swiatek will have to wait until next week before she officially ascends to the No 1 ranking, but in every other respect her relentless accumulation of landmark numbers brooks no delay.
With an imperious 6-3, 6-3 victory over Petra Kvitova, Swiatek extended her unbeaten run to 15 matches and moved into the semi-finals of the Miami Open, where she is bidding to lift her third successive WTA 1000 title and, following her recent victory in Indian Wells, become only the fourth woman in history to complete the “sunshine double”.
The Pole, whose record of three losses from 27 outings this season is the best on the WTA Tour, has now won 16 sets in a row, a run that dates back to her last-16 win over Daria Kasatkina in Doha last month. She has dropped serve just twice in Miami, and against the hard-hitting Kvitova she did not face a single break point.
They are statistics that speak of emphatic dominance.
More impressive than mere numbers, however, is the development of Swiatek’s game under Tomasz Witkorowski, the experienced Polish coach who joined her corner in December following a successful five-year partnership with Piotr Sierzputowski. Her willingness to push up inside the baseline and trade blows with Kvitova was merely the latest evidence of the increased aggression that has reaped dividends for the 20-year-old of late. Before this year, she had never been beyond the fourth round of a major hard-court event. Now she is through to her fifth semi-final in three months on the hard stuff – a run that includes a last-four appearance at the Australian Open – and has a third successive WTA 1000 title in her sights.
Whisper it quietly, but a player better known for her exploits on the red clay of Roland Garros, where she won the title two years ago, may just bid farewell to the spring hard-court swing a tad wistfully. Given that Swiatek is also a former junior Wimbledon champion, it looks like the search for a multi-surface successor to the retired Ashleigh Barty – whose three grand slam wins were achieved on clay, grass and hard – could just be over before it even began. Whether she leaves Miami with another title or not, Swiatek will enter the next phase of the season full of self-belief and eager to sustain the momentum she has established.
“I want to use the confidence I built since the beginning of Doha,” said Swiatek, who will now face Jessica Pegula after Paula Badosa, the fifth seed, retired with a viral illness five games into her quarter-final against the American.
“I think I’m on a roll, and I want to use that. Having that kind of streak got pretty tricky, but I’m pretty glad that I can play well, that I’m healthy, and that I can compete against players like Petra. She’s a legend… it was a real honour to play against her.”
There was no such cap-doffing on court, however, where Swiatek met the big-serving Czech on her own terms by throwing down back-to-back aces in the opening game. It set the tone for a near-flawless exhibition of serving, which the Pole backed up with hugely impressive play off the ground and a return game that at times bordered on the disdainful. Absorbing Kvitova’s power with the kind of impossibly low knee bends once synonymous with her compatriot Agnieszka Radwanska – no doubt more than just coincidence, given that Witkorowski once coached the former world No 2 – Swiatek retained a position high on the baseline throughout, refusing to be forced back by the two-time Wimbledon champion’s superior weight of shot. Unable to dictate and limited to barely a quarter of the points behind her second serve by an opponent who, astonishingly, has won over 58% of her return games at the tournament, Kvitova never came close to finding the consistency required to trouble the younger woman.
“From the beginning, I knew that I had to keep up with the pace because she plays really fast,” said Swiatek. “I wanted to stay low on my legs. The first serve was the key. I don’t know if I had many winners, but basically I wanted to build up positive energy from her mistakes. I’m glad that I stayed focused and I did the tactics from A to Z.”
From letters to numbers, Swiatek seems to have all the bases covered.