Iga Swiatek continued her torrid run through the French Open by dispatching Elina Svitolina on Tuesday to set up a semifinal encounter against top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka.
Swiatek, a four-time French Open champion, recorded her 26th consecutive victory at Roland Garros with a 6-1, 7-5 win over Svitolina in 1 hour, 41 minutes. The fifth-seeded Poland native is three wins shy of tying Chris Evert for the longest winning run on the Parisian red clay.
Swiatek will now turn her attention to Sabalenka, against whom she is 8-4 all-time and 5-1 on clay. This will be the first-ever meeting at Roland Garros, however.
“Against Aryna it is always a challenge,” Swiatek said of her upcoming match. “She has a game for every surface. I have to do the work, be brave with my shots and go for it. She is having a great season.
“I will not lie. It will be a tough match but am happy for the challenge,”
After struggling out of the blocks in her previous match, Swiatek breezed through the first round on Tuesday before facing resistance from the 13th-seeded Ukrainian in the second. Undaunted, Swiatek took advantage of a poor service game by Svitolina before ending the match with an ace.
“I should have had better intensity in the beginning of the second set,” Swiatek said. “When I saw my intensity go low, I got it high again. I am happy I did it at the end of the set.”
As for Sabalenka, she punched her ticket to the semifinals with a 7-6 (3), 6-3 win over Qinwen Zheng of China.
The Belarusian overcame a 4-2 deficit in the first set before changing the complexion of the match to improve to 7-1 in her career against Zheng. The lone loss came last month in the Rome quarterfinals, and it’s something the three-time major champion said fueled her on Tuesday.
“I was actually glad I lost that match, because I needed a little break before Roland-Garros,” Sabalenka said. “Today, I was just more fresh. I was ready to battle, I was ready to leave everything I had on court to get this win.”
Zheng was left to lament letting her early advantage go by the boards.
“I think in the first set I made a lot of easy mistakes,” she said. “I give her the chance so easy. Of course, I think mostly I made a match lose. I think mostly it’s on my hand because already I did some double fault in the first set when I’m leading with my service game. But it’s tennis. There’s nothing more I can do.”
–Field Level Media
