For a woman tasked with keeping Iga Swiatek calm, her sports psychologist Daria Abramowicz can be a surprisingly excitable presence at courtside. Abramowicz, a key influence in Swiatek’s rise to the top of the women’s game, cut an animated figure as the top seed fell behind at Roland Garros against the Chinese teenager Qinwen Zheng.
But Swiatek has not compiled one of the longest winning streaks since the turn of the century without being able to take charge of her own destiny, and it is a measure of the self-belief she possesses these days that she gestured to her team to pipe down as she recovered from the loss of the opening set to reach the quarter-finals 6-7 (5-7), 6-0, 6-2.
“For sure, these matches are emotional for everybody because they are tight and not easy,” said Swiatek, explaining that her exuberant support team was simply trying to motivate her. “It wasn’t easy to find solutions and to find other tactics and do something differently, because I wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong.”
That much was evident in the increasingly agitated gesticulations she directed towards her box as a 5-2 first-set lead slowly evaporated in the face of some inspired play from the 74th-ranked Zheng. With her big serve and ferocious topspin forehand, the powerful 19-year-old caused Swiatek all manner of problems, carrying the fight to the world No 1 as she fended off five set points and clawed her way back from 5-2 down in the tiebreak to claim the opener.
For Swiatek, who had not lost a set in over a month, it was all a little too reminiscent of the previous round, where she relinquished a 4-1 second-set lead against Danka Kovinic. At the end of the tiebreak she left the court clutching a notebook, yet the emphatic comeback that followed apparently owed more to Dua Lipa than tactical considerations.
“In the first set I [had] technical stuff that I wanted to change, like staying lower in my legs and not pushing the ball but swinging like I would do normally,” said Swiatek. “She was playing really fast balls, and it wasn’t easy to loosen up, because I felt a little bit tense.
“So in the second set I just kind of wanted to focus more and not really talk to the box that much. And honestly, I speeded up a little bit my forehand. Maybe that was the solution. But I felt like my mind was a little bit more clear. I was kind of singing songs. I realised that in the first set, when I was really focusing on that technical stuff, it didn’t really work because I got more and more tense.
“I was singing in my mind, basically. It’s not the first time. I’m always singing something, but I changed the song.”
For Zheng, on the other hand, harmony rapidly turned to dissonance. Swiatek stormed into a 3-0 lead. Struggling with an upper thigh injury, Zheng took a medical timeout and returned with her leg heavily strapped. But the Pole was revitalised, the anxieties of the first set consigned firmly to the past as she stepped inside the baseline, took the ball early and worked the angles. It did not help that Zheng, as she later explained, was suffering from debilitating menstrual cramps.
“In the first set I was just trying to play my tennis and I didn’t feel the pain in my stomach,” said Zheng. “So I was able to really get there and to say, ‘Come on,’ to have a good attitude.
“After, when the match [went on], I just had too pain in my stomach. I wanted to fight, I really, really wanted to fight, but I just don’t have power and it was really tough. I couldn’t show my tennis today in the second and third set, even in the first set, I’m really not happy with my performance.
“It’s just girls’ things, you know. The first day is always so tough and then, you know, I have to do sport. I always have so much pain in the first day.”
Zheng’s candour recalled Swiatek’s openness at last year’s WTA Finals, where she revealed after a tearful defeat to Maria Sakkari that she had been suffering from premenstrual syndrome. Mature, articulate and richly talented, Zheng’s emergence has been one of the stories of the tournament.
As for Swiatek, the unbeaten run continues. She has now won 32 matches in a row, equalling Justine Henin for the third-longest winning streak this century. She will now need to get past Jessica Pegula, the 11th-seeded American, to give herself a chance of drawing level with Serena Williams in second place. Pegula defeated Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.