If Iga Swiatek wins her second US Open title this weekend, the odds are that she will remember the experience more clearly than last time. When the Polish world No 1 conquered New York two years ago, it was a watershed moment in her career, marking her out as a contender for major titles beyond her beloved red clay. For all its significance, however, Swiatek has a hazy recollection of her championship-winning run.
The former champion, all but one of whose five grand slam titles have come at Roland Garros, will face Jessica Pegula for a place in the semi-finals on Wednesday night, just as she did in 2022. Swiatek ran out a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) winner that day – an encouraging precedent from her perspective, no doubt, but one unlikely to have any bearing on the rematch, given that she barely recalls it.
“I don’t remember a lot,” said Swiatek. “I remember it was the first match in 2022 where I felt like the ball is kind of listening to me a little bit more, and that’s the only thing. I don’t remember [the] specifics of how that match went, I don’t even remember the score, so I can’t really say a lot. I haven’t watched this game [since], so that’s why probably.”
There is another reason why Swiatek’s memory of the fortnight is based more on impressions than details. Having arrived in New York that year complaining that the balls were too light to control, her title-winning run was a largely pragmatic, attritional affair rather than a Carlos Alcaraz-style highlights reel. The satisfaction she felt afterwards owed more to the outcome than the experience.
“I wouldn’t say I played my best game or whatever that year, so it was a big surprise for me that I could win this tournament, because I felt like I kind of won it ugly,” said Swiatek after advancing to the quarter-finals with a far from unsightly 6-4, 6-1 victory over Liudmila Samsonova.
“That’s why I probably [don’t remember]. But I was fighting every match for every ball, and my defence was pretty great. So on the other hand, I understand why I won this tournament.”
Should she repeat that achievement on Saturday, Swiatek is likely to recall her latest campaign in New York with greater clarity. Since a shaky opening match against Kamilla Rakhimova, a lucky loser who came within a whisker of forcing a third set, the former champion has progressed through the upper half of the draw with calm authority, brushing aside Ena Shibahara, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Samsonova in straight sets. This time, though, her success has been built less on an ability to scrap and retrieve, and more on the excellence of her vastly improved service.
That might seem an unlikely claim to make about a player more noted for her dominant play off the ground and wing-heeled athleticism. The evidence, however, is compelling. Swiatek remains unbroken across her past three matches. No player left in the draw has won more service games, and among that cohort of survivors only Qinwen Zheng – dismissed 6-1, 6-2 by Aryna Sabalenka in Tuesday’s night session – had claimed more points behind her first delivery going into the quarter-finals (80% to 79%). On second serve, meanwhile, Swiatek leads the field with a 64% success rate.
Those statistics are indicative of the work the 23-year-old has put in behind the scenes to produce a smoother and more compact motion, the fruits of which are evident in the five titles she has won this season, including a fourth in five years at Roland Garros. Yet having a good serve and knowing what to do with it are two very different things.
A service-dominated first set against the 16th-seeded Samsonova showcased Swiatek’s growing variety and tactical nous with ball in hand. While touching speeds of up to 115mph, the Pole also leavened the mix with regular changes of pace and direction. That was never more evident than when, eschewing her natural tendency to pull the opponent wide in the advantage court, she closed out two consecutive first-set services games with devastatingly accurate serves down the centre line. The deft manner in which Swiatek navigated such moments laid the foundations for a victory that, once she broke for the first time to claim the set, assumed an air of inevitably.
“At the beginning I felt like we were playing kind of men’s style, just holding our serves,” Swiatek told Rennae Stubbs on court afterwards. “But I knew that if I kept pushing I would get some chances to break Mila. That happened in the last game of the first set, and I’m happy that I was there to close it. In the second set I was leading, and I just wanted to keep being focused, not let my mind drift off.”
Samsonova may lack the grand slam pedigree of Jelena Ostapenko, the former French Open champion who defeated Swiatek in the fourth round last year, but the Russian is not without the tools to discomfit Swiatek on a fast hard court. Taking a leaf out of the Ostapenko playbook, she did all she could to rush the top seed with her flat, powerful groundstrokes and heavy serve, and in the fifth game she threatened to make inroads, some mighty hitting bringing up 0-30 on Swiatek’s serve. The Pole refused to be flustered, however, setting up her forehand with a pair of solid first serves.
It was ideal preparation for facing Pegula, another clean, flat ball-striker. Swiatek is in no danger of becoming a servebot just yet, but the ability to win the occasional free point on serve will do her no harm as she seeks a seventh win over the 30-year-old American in what will be their 10th meeting. Notably, all three of Pegula’s wins have come on hard courts, although the pair have not played since last November’s showdown at the WTA Finals in Cancún, where she was on the wrong end of a 6-1, 6-0 drubbing.
Seeded sixth at Flushing Meadows, Pegula has likewise made improvements to her game since that meeting. Her outstanding form over the North American hard-court swing, which has brought a successful defence of her Canadian Open title and a final appearance in Cincinnati, has seen her defeated just once in her past 14 matches, and her impressive 6-4, 6-2 win over Diana Shnaider in the previous round suggests Swiatek will have her work cut out.
“I feel like my movement has really improved, which has really helped me stay in a lot of these points and these sets and these games and be super consistent,” said Pegula. “I think I’ve been serving pretty well. Even if it’s not working, I’ve been getting myself out of service games by serving smart or serving well in big moments.”
On Wednesday night, the American can expect to see those skills mirrored at the opposite end of the court. Like Swiatek, she has yet to drop a set; unlike Swiatek, she has failed to advance beyond a grand slam quarter-final in six previous attempts. Two of those defeats came at the hands of the Pole, and her return game will need to be at its best if she is to alter that narrative. We are unlikely to see a repeat of the 13 breaks the players shared in their quarter-final meeting two years ago.