No one could say Caroline Garcia didn’t turn up. For an hour and more, the swashbuckling Frenchwoman gave everything against Iga Swiatek. And in Garcia’s case, “everything” covers the whole caboodle: blistering serves delivered by the tour leader for aces; rapier-like returns struck from a position so far inside the baseline that it almost feels indecent; thunderous groundstrokes; silken volleying skills; breath-taking athleticism.
None of it mattered. Garcia came away with just five games – the same number Daria Kasatkina garnered in a one-sided battering by the Polish world No 1 two days ago. The aura of invincibility surrounding Swiatek, whose 6-3, 6-2 victory carries her into the last four of the WTA Finals for the first time, is such that her name might as well be inscribed on the trophy already.
There is a long way to go before then, of course. Yet, playing as she did, certainly in the initial stages, Garcia would surely have beaten anyone else in the eight-woman field. The Frenchwoman, who overpowered Swiatek in the Poland Open quarter-finals this summer, is the only singles player in Fort Worth with a victory over the 21-year-old this season, and here she picked up from where she left off in Warsaw, attacking relentlessly behind her serve, taking her returns impossibly early, battering her groundstrokes.
The mental resilience Swiatek showed to survive the early onslaught was extraordinary. Garcia had treated the Pole’s second serve with disdain in their previous meeting, and when the top seed produced a nervy double-fault en route to being broken in the third game, it looked as though history might be about to repeat itself.
The challenge posed by Garcia’s aggressive returning is both psychological and technical. On the one hand, there is the intimidation factor; on the other, there is the need to produce execute flawlessly under extreme pressure. She is a tennis highwaywoman, her battle cry “Stand and deliver”. Yet Swiatek rarely fails to deliver these days. As Garcia served to consolidate her advantage, firing down two aces, Swiatek took a leaf out of her opponent’s book, moving in to crush a backhand return for a winner. Another scorching drive off that wing sealed the break back and, once Swiatek survived another stern examination on serve, she was on her way.
“I feel like at the beginning I didn’t have much confidence,” said the French and US Open champion following her 47th straight-sets win of the year. “She broke me, basically, because I couldn’t put my first serve in. But then I changed my technique a little bit, I knew what I had to do, to be more solid, but maybe serve with less power so that I had more control.
“I’m pretty happy that it worked, because in the next games, maybe I wasn’t serving perfectly, but we played rallies and I felt like in those rallies I could really dominate.
“It’s the last tournament of the season, so I have kind of nothing to lose. I don’t have to worry what I’m going to do next. So for sure, I’m giving it 100%, physically and mentally.”
It showed. A sequence of eight straight points carried Swiatek to 5-3 and, having survived a testing service game to seal the opener, she broke again at the start of the second set. When Garcia then squandered a 0-40 advantage on Swiatek’s serve in the next game, her fate was as good as sealed. By the latter stages of the second set, she was having to play at the very top of her ability merely to win points.
Martina Navratilova, providing analysis for Amazon Prime, highlighted a lack of tactical nous on Garcia’s part, in particular her habit of approaching crosscourt, which opened up the angles for Swiatek. And yes, the Frenchwoman was tactically naive at times. But no one will appreciate better than Navratilova the difficulty of thinking clearly in the face of relentless attacking incursions by a rampant world No 1, an area in which the 18-time slam champion was a past master. Garcia vowed to improve.
“I will try to learn the tough lesson Iga gave me,” said the Frenchwoman, who will now face Kasatkina, a 7-6 (8-6), 6-3 winner over Coco Gauff, in a playoff for second place in Tracy Austin Group.
“Iga played a great match, she didn’t give me a lot of space, a lot of mistakes. I think I can still play better, but today was not enough. I will try to see what we can do better with the team to get better on court in two days and face the challenge of Dasha.”
Kasatkina, who has not lost a set in her three meetings with Gauff, recovered from 4-1 down in the opening set as the American teenager struggled with her consistency. Gauff, who is now eliminated after losing her opening match to Garcia in straight sets, ended the night with 43 unforced errors to the Russian’s 14.
“It was tough,” said Kasatkina, the eighth seed. “I was nervous at the beginning.
“With the rhythm of the match, nerves disappear a little bit and start to be better. So I’m really happy to be still alive.”