By Troy Finnegan
“I don’t know what to do.”
Maria Sakkari looked up to new coach David Witt, desperate for a solution. Time was running out, the score of one of the biggest matches of her career quickly slipping out of reach. Of course, the problem wasn’t with Sakkari, who may not have been playing at the same level as the week preceding the Indian Wells final, but was by no means playing a bad match.
The problem was the beast on the other side of the net. Sakkari certainly wasn’t the first to utter those thoughts, and she definitely won’t be the last. But at that point, after a four game run to give Iga Świątek a 6-4, 2-0 lead in Sunday’s showpiece, the result was all but decided.
Witt and Sakkari never found the solution that the Greek was looking for in that fateful moment, to no fault of their own. By all indicators, the early returns on the new pairing were excellent, with Sakkari showcasing some of her best tennis in quite a while in the California desert and persevering through some very difficult mental battles that she may not have without Witt’s calming presence. Sakkari came from a set down to win twice, and her recovery from the second set collapse in her semifinal against Coco Gauff was certainly one of steely resolve.
But Iga Świątek is inevitable.
I want to put into perspective how incredible Iga’s run over the course of her very young career is. At just 22 years old, she has won 19 titles. She’s 19-4 in finals played on tour. Eight of those trophies came at WTA 1000 level, and four of them came in Grand Slams. She is 20-2 in 2024, winning over 90% of her matches. Since the start of 2022, Swiatek is 155-22 for a win rate of about 87.6%.
At least from a viewing experience, Świątek has reached a new tier. It always feels like she is about to run off six, eight, ten games in a row, and frequently she does, like in the Indian Wells final! She’s reached the point where she’s not only the best player in the world—she has been for a few years now—but no matter where she is in the match, it feels like they all will end the same way.
For any college basketball fans out there in the United States, almost every match she plays — save for a select few matchups — feels like the No. 1 seed against the No. 16 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The underdog can build a lead, even a big one, but it almost always feels like Świątek has it in her to win as many games in a row as she needs.
That feeling comes from not only the fact that she has won nearly 90% of her matches over the past three seasons, and even more than that so far this year, but it’s the way she wins those matches that leaves little room for doubt.
Take her run at Indian Wells for example. Her first match was against Danielle Collins, who gave her all sorts of trouble in January at the Australian Open. Swiatek faced two break points at 3-3 in the first set. She won the match 6-3 6-0.
Her next match was against Linda Noskova, the big-hitting Czech who dispatched the World No. 1 in Melbourne. Swiatek was in danger of going down a pair of breaks in the first set while serving at 2-4, 15-40. She won the match 6-4 6-0.
Fast forward to the final against Sakkari. The Greek, leading the head-to-head 3-2 coming into the day, made a big push to level the first set at 4-4 and looked ready to challenge Świątek. Iga won the match 6-4 6-0.
And the thing is, Świątek is still somehow getting better. She’s long been the best returner on the tour, with a break percentage hovering right around 50% since the start of 2022. She destroys opponents in rallies from both wings, able to attack and defend with ease from the baseline. But her serve is also getting much, much better, as highlighted by Jeff Sackmann in TennisAbstract’s Heavy Topspin blog — Świątek is making more first serves this year and is holding serve 83.5% of the time, the best mark on tour by a comfortable margin.
Proof of Świątek’s lofty status is the discourse around her vulnerable moments. Every loss, sometimes even every set loss, becomes a think piece about why she’s playing poorly, or what she needs to improve, or how she doesn’t play all that well in close matches (not true). I remember the conversation after the Svitolina loss at Wimbledon, or the Ostapenko loss at the U.S. Open, or the Noskova loss in Melbourne.
Of course, the latter two of those losses were disappointing, there’s no way around it. Świątek was rattled against a peaking Ostapenko in New York, and never really found her best level on the faster Australian courts over the whole tournament. Świątek has been more susceptible to early round losses at the recent majors than, say, Aryna Sabalenka, whose early round consistency at the tour’s biggest tournaments has been unmatched over the past few seasons.
Since the start of 2022, Świątek has failed to reach the quarterfinals at four of the nine Grand Slams over that time, but the context around a few of those losses helps explain them a little bit. Her third round loss to Alize Cornet at Wimbledon in 2022 was unquestionably a poor performance, but she was without a grass court tune-up that year and was surrounded by the buzz of her remarkable 37-match winning streak, adding a lot of extra pressure on the Pole on a surface that she wasn’t comfortable on at the time. She entered those 2022 Championships with just a 7-5 career grass court record. Her loss to Elena Rybakina in the round of 16 of the 2023 Australian Open was an incredibly difficult fourth round matchup, and the only reason that Rybakina was even in Świątek’s draw is because she didn’t receive ranking points for winning Wimbledon the year prior.
She has had bad days at the last two majors. No question about it. Those bad days have been a little more frequent than one would like from a player of her stature, and maybe that will increase the pressure on her at the upcoming majors. But if every match were played on paper, she would never lose. Instead, she almost never loses. There’s an old saying in sports: That’s why they play the games.
The fact is, Świątek doesn’t have to change anything. She will lose matches, everyone does, but the only other people who get every single one of their losses dissected and analyzed ad nauseam are the true all time greats. That alone puts her in elite company.
Wherever she shows up, she is the woman to beat.
Popcorn Tennis 
Well said. Swiatek is an awesome player – a bit premature to place her in hyperbole stature.
Possibly dial it back a notch.
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