2GS The Sunday Times June 5, 2022 21An emotional
Gauff was
brushed aside
in only 68
minutes by
Swiatek
Swiatek sinks
to her knees
after turning the
French Open
final into a
procession with
the promise of
much more to
come from herDAVID WINTER/SHUTTERSTOCK‘The scale of the
task was evident
from the start
when Swiatek
broke the Gauff
serve in the
opening game’The hotly anticipated French Open
women’s singles final turned out to
be a 68-minute masterclass on the
part of the quite brilliant Iga Swiatek.
The 21-year-old from Poland won her
second Roland Garros title by
overwhelming the American
teenager Coco Gauff with the
considerable armoury that has seen
her conquer just about all before her
on the women’s tour this year.
Frankly, the outcome never looked
in doubt yesterday. As she has done
for the past 3½ months, Swiatek
raced out of the blocks and never
gave her opponent a chance in a 6-1,
6-3 thrashing. It is the world No 1’s
35th consecutive victory, drawing her
level with Venus Williams’s record
streak in 2000.
“I am pretty happy that every
piece has finally come together,”
Swiatek said. “Two years ago winning
this title was something amazing that
I wouldn’t have expected ever. This
time I worked hard to get here.”
Gauff can be proud of her run here
as reaching a first grand-slam final at
the age of 18 is certainly to be
admired. But yesterday’s level of
opposition was several steps up from
what she had faced before this
fortnight, having not come up against
a top-30 player in her previous six
matches.
The scale of the task was evident
from the start when Swiatek broke
the Gauff serve in the opening game.
Incredibly, she did this in each of the
seven matches she played this
fortnight, showing how difficult it is
for opponents to get a headstart on
her. Twenty minutes later, she was
already 4-0 up.
Gauff finally got on the board for
4-1, but any hopes of a shift in
momentum were quickly
dashed when Swiatek reeled
off two straight games for
the set. The barrage of
power and angled shots
coming off her racket,
which suddenly change
the direction of the ball
Indomitable
Swiatek’s
power and
precision too
hot for Gauff
out of nowhere, was too challenging
for Gauff to contend with.
Gauff made a better start in the
second set with a break, much to the
delight of the 15,000-capacity crowd
on Court Philippe-Chatrier hoping
for a better contest. But this was
about as good as it got for her with
Swiatek quickly hitting back to level
at 2-2 and then pulling away to within
one game of victory at 5-2.
As thunder rumbled overhead,
Swiatek completed the job just in
time. She served out the match at 5-3
before rushing to celebrate with her
family and friends in the stands,
including the Polish footballer Robert
Lewandowski. Gauff, meanwhile, sat
crestfallen on her courtside chair and
burst into tears.
“I want to congratulate Iga,” Gauff
said. “What you’ve done on tour the
past few months has truly been
amazing and you totally deserve it.
Hopefully we can play each other in
more finals and hopefully I can get aStuart Fraser
started I was hoping when I do the
next [tournament] the situation will
be better but I will still have hope.”
Swiatek has been so dominant on
the tour recently that her 8,631
ranking points is almost twice the
total of Anett Kontaveit, the world No
2 on 4,325. The French Open is her
sixth consecutive title after winning
trophies in Doha, Indian Wells,
Miami, Stuttgart and Rome.
Swiatek cannot add to her total at
Wimbledon this year, where there
are no ranking points because of the
decision to exclude Russian and
Belarussian players, but this will not
matter a jot to her. She still intends to
play at the All England Club and will
no doubt be the heavy favourite given
the absence of the champion
Ashleigh Barty, who retired in March.
She showed her prowess on the grass
as a Wimbledon junior champion in
2018, which included a 6-0, 6-1 win
over Emma Raducanu in the quarter-
finals.
Such has been Swiatek’s
superiority during her two
triumphant runs at Roland Garros —
she has only dropped one set in the
29 played here in 2020 and 2022 —
that some pondered whether she
might become the female version of
the 13-times champion Rafael Nadal.
Given her levelheadedness, it is
unlikely that these thoughts areswirling in her own head. “I don’t
think she’s thinking I can win this
tournament 14 times,” Chris Evert,
the 18-times grand-slam champion
and Eurosport pundit, said. “We all
talk about being in the moment. She
knows that her journey is that she
wants to be fit, she wants to be
hungry, she wants to play good tennis
for another 15-20 years and win a lot
of grand slams. That’s in the long-
term.
“In the short-term, she is going to
be thinking about Wimbledon. It’s
only three weeks away. I hope she
takes a week off and does nothing, to
get the body fresh and then get onto
the grass. She doesn’t think too far
ahead, I don’t think.”35
Consecutive victories
for Swiatek, drawing her
level with Venus
Williams’s record dating
back to 20004
Swiatek is the fourth
women to win the French
Open more than once
this century after Justine
Henin, Serena Williams
Andy Murray was beaten 5-7, 7-6, and Maria Sharapova
6-3 by Denis Kudla, the American
world No 81, in the Surbiton
Trophy semi-final. Murray, who
missed the French Open to get in
shape on grass, will play in the
Stuttgart Open this week and
return to London to play at
Queen’s before another
Wimbledon campaign begins.MURRAY DEFEATED IN
SURBITON SEMI-FINALAlexander Zverev said yesterday
that he has “several torn lateral
ligaments” in the right ankle he
injured during his French Open
semi-final against Rafael Nadal. “I
will be flying to Germany to make
further examinations and to
determine the best and quickest
way for me to recover,” Zverev
said on Instagram. The injury
means it is unlikely that he will be
playing at Wimbledon.ZVEREV HAS TORN
ANKLE LIGAMENTSwin over you one of these days.
“I would like to thank my team.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get this one
today. But thank you for always
supporting me and hopefully this is
the first final of many. You guys have
helped me so much throughout the
year.”
The loudest roar from the
crowd came when Swiatek
used her winner’s speech to
voice her support for Ukraine
after the invasion Russia and
Belarus. Throughout her
winning streak she has worn
a blue and yellow ribbon on
her baseball cap.
“I wanted to say
something to Ukraine
— to stay strong,
because the war is
still there,” Swiatek
said. “Since itepes of a shift in
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