After falling early at the Australian Open, Iga Swiatek sounded a note of caution before her return to the tour in Doha. Contemplating an ostensibly tough opener against Danielle Collins, the combative American who defeated her in the semi-finals at Melbourne Park last year, Swiatek was at pains to emphasise that it is not always possible to find perfection. Yet perfection has a habit of finding her, especially in the Qatari capital, and the Polish world No 1 marked her return to the city where last year’s 37-match winning streak began by demolishing Collins 6-0, 6-1 in just 53 minutes.
As she embarks on a four-month stretch where she will be defending points every time she steps on court, it was a statement win by Swiatek. Admittedly, she was aided and abetted by an opponent who offered little by way of resistance. Faltering and listless, Collins was a shadow of her normal tenacious self, racking up 22 unforced errors and winning a paltry 28% of points on serve. Yet you can play only as well as your opponent allows, and here Swiatek gave no quarter, combining flawlessly efficient play off the ground with an outstanding display on serve as she hustled and harried the hapless Collins into submission.
Sterner tests lie ahead, most immediately a mouth-watering quarter-final meeting with Belinda Bencic, but if Swiatek is feeling the weight of a period in which she will be called upon to defend not only her Doha crown but also titles in Indian Wells, Miami, Stuttgart, Rome and Paris, it did not show.
“[Last year] was a pretty nice chapter, but I’m really looking forward to the next challenges,” said Swiatek on court afterwards. “The season was great, but also it puts a lot of baggage on one’s shoulders, so I’m trying to really kind of shake it off and move forward, and not really come back to what happened last year.
“I really like playing here, it doesn’t matter what result I had last year, I just really like the conditions and I enjoy the venue and the atmosphere.”
It showed. Any optimism Collins might have felt following last year’s victory over Swiatek at Melbourne Park was rapidly extinguished as the top seed set about her task with an aggression and intent that belied her recent inactivity. It took Swiatek just 10 minutes to establish a three-game lead, and when Collins double-faulted to concede a second break, the set felt over in all but name. So it proved, Swiatek wrapping up the opener with a blistering backhand winner. The tone was set, and although Collins eventually stopped the rot after a run of nine consecutive games against her, offering a momentary glimpse of her trademark authority from the baseline, she was never able to summon the consistency required to trouble the top seed.
“I’m pretty happy that I’m already in the rhythm even though it was my first match [since the Australian Open],” said Swiatek. “From the beginning till the end I was really disciplined and focused, so I’m happy that I could use my tactics and that I stuck with it till the end of the match.
“I didn’t really let Danielle get into the rhythm. I wanted to be aggressive. I’m pretty happy that I did that well.”
It was all in stark contrast to the preceding contest, in which Jessica Pegula saved two match points and fought back from 5-2 down in the decider to claim a dramatic 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 victory over former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko.
“The beauty about tennis is there’s no time limit, so there’s always a chance,” said Pegula, the second seed, after playing her first match since revealing that her mother suffered a cardiac arrest last summer.
“She might be [watching], it’s a good time zone, so who knows? She probably would have been having a heart attack.”
Pegula now faces another potentially stern examination against Beatriz Haddad Maia. The Brazilian, a semi-finalist in Abu Dhabi last week, defeated Daria Kasatkina, the sixth seed, 6-3, 7-6 (9-7) to claim her fifth victory in six matches.
Bencic, the champion in Abu Dhabi, fought back from a set and 4-1 down to outlast Victoria Azarenka 1-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4.