This time, Iga Swiatek did not hurl her racket skywards as she had done in Doha and Indian Wells. As Naomi Osaka shanked one last despairing return wide, Swiatek gently discarded the weapon she had wielded to such devastating effect over the preceding hour and 17 minutes and dropped to her haunches, covering her face in disbelief.
There was good cause for the Pole’s incredulity. With her emphatic 6-4, 6-0 victory over Osaka, she became only the fourth woman in history to complete the “Sunshine Double” of Indian Wells and Miami. Her predecessors were Stefanie Graf, Kim Clijsters and Victoria Azarenka, former world No 1s all. Swiatek will join that elite set too on Monday, displacing the retired Ashleigh Barty as the world’s top-ranked player. If she maintains her current trajectory, it will be a long reign.
This was Swiatek’s third successive WTA 1000 triumph, following her victories in Doha and Indian Wells. She is unbeaten in 17 matches and has now won each of her last six finals, all in straight sets, conceding a collective total of just 20 games in the process. That’s an average of 1.6 games a set. To say that the 20-year-old is a player for the big occasion would be an understatement. Career landmarks are piling up at such an astonishing rate that she barely has time to take in one feat before another takes its place. Perhaps that is the secret. Swiatek has been riding a wave of momentum that has left little time for reflection. Now the former French Open champion will hope to carry that impetus – and the confidence it has instilled in her – into the European clay-court swing.
“I learned a lot about myself, that I can keep going and really I don’t need to feel like 100% on points to win matches against great players,” Swiatek said of her extraordinary run in North America.
“I can trust myself a little bit more right now. I really used that streak to have more confidence and also the ranking, you know. Sometimes I felt earlier that the ranking can push me down a little bit. It felt like baggage on my shoulders. This time I worked through that, and it was much better, and it really inspired me. That’s what I can take from it.”
Osaka, a four-time slam champion and former world No 1, knows what it is to experience such feelings. Her resurgence over the past 10 days, after she was disgracefully heckled by a spectator during a second-round defeat to Veronika Kudermetova in Indian Wells, has been among the stories of the tournament. Set to recover some ground in the rankings after a run that has brought wins over Danielle Collins and, in the semi-finals, the Olympic champion Belinda Bencic, against whom she has long struggled, Osaka has made no secret of her desire to return to No 1. She reiterated that ambition here, albeit not without talking herself around.
“My main goal is to be seeded at French Open now,” said Osaka. “But I think by next year, or by the end of this year, I would love to be top 10. By next year, I would love to be the No 1. Oh, that’s a big statement. Close to – top five. Erase that. Top five.
“You know what? I’m going to set that goal. Top one, yeah, No 1. It feels kind of good to chase something, and I think that maybe that’s a feeling that I have been missing, like wanting to strive to do better. For me, it’s cool to see where the level of No 1 is, so I can find out if I can reach that.”
For the moment, it looks a little way off. Against Swiatek, the scale of the challenge was laid bare as early as the opening game, a brutal 11-minute affair in which Osaka struck four aces but was still forced to save two break points and negotiate seven deuces as the two women traded huge blows from the baseline.
It set the tone for another return-of-serve masterclass from Swiatek, who came into the match having broken in over 58% of her return games in Miami and was again in ruthless mood here, winning two-thirds of the points on Osaka’s second serve. The fifth game brought a vital breakthrough for the Pole, a scorching backhand return securing a break that Osaka was never able to retrieve. When Osaka started the second set by missing four first serves in a row from 0-15, allowing her irrepressible opponent to claim a second break, the Japanese player’s challenge quickly began to unravel.
“I wanted to be in the zone,” said Swiatek, who will delay her start to the clay-court season after withdrawing from Charleston with a minor arm injury.
“I know I play the best when I don’t even look at the score and treat every point the same way. I had some thoughts that were like flying around my head [at a set and a break] where I thought, ‘Whoa, this is actually possible.’ But I needed to really stay disciplined and not let myself think about that stuff and just be focused on playing.
“That’s how it went in second set. In the zone, and I’m happy about it. Because it’s the easiest way for me to be dominant and to not let myself distract myself.”
If Swiatek continues in her current vein, self-distraction may just be the best hope the chasing pack have.