For Iga Swiatek, it was the rarest of indignities.
The Polish world No 1, a three-time champion at Roland Garros who tends to be queen of all she surveys on her beloved red clay, had conceded just eight games in three matches en route to her quarter-final meeting with Beatriz Haddad Maia at the Madrid Open. So when Swiatek pocketed four of the first five games against the 11th-seeded Brazilian, the impression was very much one of business as usual.
Then Haddad Maia reeled off five straight games to seize the opening set, and we were left reaching for the record books. When was the last time anyone had won five successive games against Swiatek, let alone on a clay court? Paula Badosa achieved the feat at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, but that was in another lifetime, when the Pole was ranked eighth and her ascent to the top of the game was still in its early stages.
Things happen in tennis matches, and no player is immune to the kind of dip that saw Swiatek finish the opening set with 13 unforced errors, almost half her final tally of 27. But to put Haddad Maia’s success in context, at last year’s Qatar Open Swiatek won the entire tournament for the loss of only five games. So this was a collector’s item. The 22-year-old is more accustomed to inflicting such pain than sustaining it, a fact she demonstrated in the previous round against Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo, where she lost the opening game and then won the next dozen in a row. Were we on the verge of an upset?
Well, no. The response from Swiatek was devastating, an anything-you-can-do run of eight consecutive games that paved the way for a 4-6, 6-0, 6-2 victory and a semi-final appointment with Madison Keys, who later saw off Ons Jabeur in another wildly fluctuating contest. It was enough to make you think she was affronted.
“In the first set, for sure, there were ups and downs,” said Swiatek. “I made some decisions that weren’t really right for the moment. But I’m happy that I came back in the second and I could reset and get back to a solid game.
“It’s not that easy to choose the right solution, because you feel differently most times, you won’t get the same situations.
“It took me a while today to find the right solution. Sometimes it can just click easily after a couple of points, and sometimes you really need to dig deep and try, try, try for 10 minutes and then it’s going to maybe click.”
For all Swiatek’s success on red dirt, it is no secret that she is less comfortable at the Caja Mágica, which lies roughly 650 metres above sea level, making it the fastest stop on the European clay swing. Madrid remains the only significant clay-court title to elude her grasp and, as Haddad Maia crushed returns from inside the baseline and hammered her flat, penetrating groundstrokes into the corners, it was easy to see why she has troubled Swiatek in the past, defeating her at the Canadian Open in 2022 and holding a set point in a tightly contested French Open semi-final last summer.
The Brazilian’s big forehand and heavy southpaw serve are tailor made for conditions in which the thinner air allows the ball to travel more quickly. Once Swiatek stopped leaking errors, however, she quickly established unstoppable momentum. It bodes well for her meeting with Keys, another player who has overpowered her in the past. Like Swiatek, the American was required to come from behind against Jabeur, the champion of two years ago, finally prevailing 0-6, 7-5, 6-1 after losing the first eight games of the match.
“Obviously [it’s] not normal to go down 8-0 and then start playing tennis, but I was able to really reset and relax after getting that first game,” said Keys, 29, who beat Coco Gauff in the previous round.
“At one point it was like, ‘Wow, this is embarrassing. We’ve got to figure something out.’ But I think eventually I was just, like, ‘I’m just going to start going for things. I’m going to start just trying to focus on myself and my game, just try to get into every single game and just try to make things competitive.’ Once I did that, it felt like the momentum switched really quickly.”