As Qinwen Zheng can attest, to make Iga Swiatek stumble is one thing, to make her fall quite another.
Twice last year Zheng, a rising 20-year-old from China ranked 25th in the world, pushed Swiatek to a deciding set. And as she served to move within a game of levelling at a set apiece against the defending champion in Stuttgart, and Swiatek slipped on the clay to miss her second break point of the game, another three-setter began to look possible.
Notably, though, the Pole recovered from that wobbly moment, retaining her balance to avoid the indignity of besmirching her smart new monochrome kit with red clay, and that felt like an appropriate metaphor for her performance as she overcame a brief passage of unsteadiness to mark her return from injury with a 6-1, 6-4 victory.
“I think that up-and-down kind of vibe that we had on court when I lost like two games or three in a row, it’s because I had a break,” said Swiatek, who pulled out of last month’s Miami Open with a rib injury after losing to Elena Rybakina in the last four at Indian Wells.
“I’m very happy I was able to come back, because that’s like the most important thing for me. Even though I may be a little bit rusty, I’m happy I can play good tennis.
“I wouldn’t call anything perfect, because there is always something you can improve. But for sure, even though I had [an] up- and-down [performance], I’m happy that I was solid at the end and I really could be more composed and got my level up.”
Handed a tricky opening assignment at a venue where she won on her debut last season, Swiatek was firmly in control for most of the match, dominating the baseline exchanges and controlling her service games with the depth, spin and precision of her delivery. But with the Pole leading by a set and a break, a controversial overrule by Miriam Bley threatened to alter the flow of the match, the German chair umpire boldly informing Swiatek, one of the tour’s quickest athletes, that she would not have reached a Zheng backhand winner that was wrongly called out initially.
“It went off the line and I don’t think you would have got it, Iga,” said Bley. “Honestly, it was so fast off the line, skidded off the line.”
The world No 1 was entitled to feel unhappy about the decision, which brought up a first break point of the contest for Zheng, and her mood was not improved when a tight call on her first serve immediately went against her. A big forehand approach subsequently set up a simple putaway for Zheng, and for the first time in the match she had something to work with.
It was all Swiatek could do to navigate the next game, a 10-minute epic of five deuces, but navigate it she did, blasting a forehand return to convert her third break point before serving out to wrap up the win in an hour and 26 minutes.
Swiatek, the reigning French and US Open champion, advances to a quarter-final meeting with Karolina Pliskova, the Czech former world No 1, who came through 6-2, 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (7-5) against Croatia’s Donna Vekic. But there was no such luck for Rybakina, the Wimbledon champion, who was forced to retire with a lower back injury while trailing 6-1, 3-1 against Beatriz Haddad Maia.
Haddad Maia will face Ons Jabeur, the third seed, in the last eight.