Victory at Flushing Meadows marked a watershed moment for Iga Swiatek.
On the eve of her title defence, Swiatek described last year’s US Open as “the most important tournament in terms of me believing in myself and progressing on hard courts” – quite a statement, given that, five months before her New York triumph, she became only the fourth woman ever to complete the Sunshine Double of Indian Wells and Miami.
Yet you could see exactly what the Pole meant.
Winning a hard-court major elevated Swiatek to a new level, cementing her transition from clay-court specialist to multi-surface threat. From that moment on, grand slam titles became the yardstick by which her career would be measured, not least by herself. It was not without reason that the 22-year-old spoke of having reached her goal for the season after this summer’s French Open win. Majors are the currency in which she deals now.
So the manner in which Swiatek was relieved of both her US Open crown and the No 1 ranking by Jelena Ostapenko, the Latvian 20th seed, will have hurt. Even allowing for Ostapenko’s unbeaten record against the world’s best player, it was a shock to see Swiatek fall away as dramatically as she did in the latter stages of a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 defeat.
That is not to deny the quality of Ostapenko’s performance, which was even more formidable than her tally of 31 winners would suggest. For every ball the 2017 French Open champion fired past Swiatek with such brutal force and conviction, there were two more that harried the Pole into huge shanks and mishits. By the end, it felt almost as though the chances of Swiatek hitting the backstop or the lines were about 50/50.
“I’m just surprised that my level changed so drastically, because usually when I play bad, I play bad at the beginning, then I kind of catch up or just problem solve,” said Swiatek. “This time it was totally the opposite.
“I don’t really know what happened with my game. I felt no control suddenly. I just have to watch and see, because I didn’t really know why I started making so many mistakes… My mistakes were so huge.”
It is no secret that Swiatek can be vulnerable to an opponent possessed of the firepower to exploit her second serve and rush her off the ground, and that is certainly a category into which Ostapenko falls. Yet her problems ran deeper than simply being denied time on the ball. As Swiatek demonstrated in winning the opening set – and almost cancelling out a 4-1 deficit in the second – she was just as capable of rushing Ostapenko as vice versa.
Ostapenko acknowledged Swiatek’s difficulties against big-hitters – “She likes to have some time; when I play fast, aggressive and powerful, she’s a little bit in trouble,” said the Latvian – but, tellingly, she attributed her victory to poise as much as potency.
“Maybe, in the second and third set, I was a little bit more consistent and didn’t go for crazy shots,” said Ostapenko. “I was going for shots when I had a chance of doing that.”
From Swiatek’s perspective, there were too many such chances. A case in point came in the third game of the decider, where Ostapenko hammered four huge forehands to go up a double break. It was brilliant ball-striking, no doubt. But why was Ostapenko presented with four forehands in the first place? Three of those opportunities came off returns, so it is not as though Swiatek had no control over the situation.
And yes, of course tactical clarity can be elusive in the deciding set of a big match. But with coaching permitted these days, it seemed strange that there was no intervention from Swiatek’s box, where the worried glances exchanged between her coach, Tomasz Wiktorowski, and Daria Abramowicz, her psychologist, did not appear to be parlayed into any kind of tactical guidance.
Lord knows, she could have done with it. Serving into the body made sense in theory, given Ostapenko’s penchant for taking big cuts at the ball. In practice, though, Swiatek’s deliveries too often strayed directly into her opponent’s strike zone. Greater variety would have helped, and to her credit Swiatek was quick to recognise the issue, switching things up on several occasions after Ostapenko landed heavy blows on the return.
By then, though, the damage had been done. Ostapenko thrives on confidence, and will have been delighted by her ability to discomfit the top seed. Certainly she was less troubled by Swiatek’s serving than she might have been had her rival found the corners more often.
“A lot of times she was serving in my body,” said Ostapenko. “Of course, I realised it during the match and I was ready for it. She improved her serve. It’s much stronger now.
“[But] as I said, I was ready for this and I think I’m returning pretty well, so that’s not a big problem for me.”
Most significantly, the mental and emotional dynamics of the contest weighed heavily in Ostapenko’s favour. She spoke beforehand of having nothing to lose, yet the exasperated looks she cast to her courtside box as she fell behind early on did not speak of a player resigned to her fate. It took just four games for the Latvian to dismiss one of her support team from the stands, a sure sign that she had grander ambitions than she was letting on. This was Ostapenko’s kind of match – big stage, big opponent, big stakes – and she was not about to let the moment pass without having a proper go.
One year on, did complaints about the regular duty balls used in the women’s events during last year’s US Open series also contribute to Swiatek’s difficulties? The switch from last season’s regular duty ball to the same heavy duty version used by the men did not prevent her shots from flying, most notably when she almost hit the backstop with a regulation backhand midway through the second set. If anything, the thicker felt tends to favour big ball-strikers like Ostapenko, affording them more control. Admittedly that did not prevent the Latvian from racking up a combined total of 117 unforced errors over the previous two rounds. But it may just have helped her to limit them to 20 when it most mattered.
While Ostapenko was able to swing with freedom, for Swiatek, defending both a grand slam title and the No 1 ranking she has held since last April, the pressure could not have been greater. Aryna Sabalenka will ascend to top spot after the tournament, and while the Belarusian celebrated her newfound status with a comfortable 6-1, 6-3 victory over Daria Kasatkina, Swiatek is left to contemplate the end of a 75-week reign as the world’s best player. It is a mantle that, she admitted, has recently weighed heavily on her.
“It meant a lot,” said Swiatek. “It was great. On the other hand, this last part, it was pretty exhausting. I still need to do all this stuff that my team and all these great players like Roger [Federer], Novak [Djokovic] or [Rafa Nadal] are telling you about: you just have to focus on the tournaments, not the rankings.
“Usually I’m not looking at numbers but, overall, I love them. I would love to extend this record a little bit longer. For sure when you lose it, there are some sad emotions. [But] as I said, all these great players know it’s going to come back if you work hard, focus on the right things, just develop as a player.”
What might that development look like? A more compact forehand would certainly make Swiatek less vulnerable to big hitters. She made a combined total of 27 groundstroke errors against Ostapenko (15 unforced, 12 forced); of those, 18 came off the forehand side. It is clear where the issue lies, but the nature of the fix is perhaps less obvious. After all that Swiatek has won with her existing swing, particularly on clay, just how sensible would it be to make a significant technical change purely to address a problem only a handful of players are capable of exploiting?
That is a question for Wiktorowski, who faced a similar challenge in the later years of his coaching partnership with Agnieszka Radwanska. History suggests the experienced Polish coach will look carefully at the bigger picture before placing too much emphasis on the significance of isolated results. Ostapenko’s 6-0, 6-2 quarter-final defeat to Coco Gauff will do nothing to discourage that view. While it is not a coincidence that Swiatek succumbed to a pair of big-hitters at this season’s hard-court slams – she was beaten by Elena Rybakina at the same stage of the Australian Open, one of three setbacks she has suffered against the powerful Kazakh in 2023 – the smart money is on evolution rather than revolution.
With that in mind, there is obvious scope for greater variety in Swiatek’s game. Some of the tools at her disposal remain underutilised. The lesser spotted Swiatek sliced backhand (see also: Bad Homburg) made an appearance in the second game against Ostapenko, immediately drawing a forehand error from the Latvian, yet it was not a tactic to which the Pole returned. Neither has the drop shot, another stroke with which she has experimented this season, become a staple of the Swiatek arsenal. And while the quality of her transition game has improved immensely, the Pole typically tends to move forward only when the point is all but won, rather than seeking to force the issue from the net.
So there are plenty of potential areas to work on, and the signs are that Swiatek intends to do just that.
“I’m happy that I’m going to have some time now to practise because I really, really need that, and I really miss that,” she said. “I’m happy that I’ll have time to reset and go home for a while and just spend time a little bit more differently than on tour.”
This year’s US Open may not have ended as Swiatek would have wished. Yet, if the tournament proves to be the catalyst for the next stage in her evolution, it could once again prove a watershed moment.