Following the rapid turnaround that saw her hotfoot it from the Cincinnati Open to New York, where she began her mixed doubles campaign alongside Casper Ruud this time last week only hours after defeating Jasmine Paolini in the Cincinnati Open final, the Polish world No 2 finally got her singles campaign underway at Flushing Meadows.

This year’s Sunday start means the season’s final major is already well underway and, having entered the fray belatedly, Swiatek had the air of a woman eager to make up for lost time. She dispatched Emiliana Arango of Colombia 6-1, 6-2 in exactly an hour, delivering a performance as dominant as the scoreline would suggest to secure a second-round meeting with Suzan Lamens of the Netherlands.

If it was quick, Swiatek would not have it any other way. The concrete cacophony that is New York will never be the most natural habit for a woman who once wrote a column about her rise entitled: “The story of a Polish introvert”, although you would hardly have guessed it from the commanding nature of a display in which she fired 26 winners and did not face a single break point. Despite the summary nature of the win, Swiatek is evidently in no hurry to leave the city just yet.

Indeed, it was all very much business as usual for the Pole, who has now won 65 straight opening-round matches at tour level to eclipse the open-era record previously held by Monica Seles. That run includes 24 in a row at the majors, matching the mark achieved by her compatriot Agnieszka Radwanska – the most recent player to achieve such early-round consistency – between 2009 and 2015.

Those numbers will mean little to Swiatek; not when she has her sights set on the larger prize of a second US Open title to go with her 2022 victory. Yet they underline the wider sense of resurgence surrounding the 24-year-old after her unexpected run to the Wimbledon crown this summer. Gone is the player who endured a 13-month trophy drought, replaced by the serial winner of old – one who knows how to navigate the unique challenges of a city that reputedly never sleeps. 

“In 2022, it’s not like I played amazing from the beginning,” said Swiatek. “It was probably the toughest slam [in which] I had to overcome a lot of challenges and I managed to win it. Every year is kind of tough, you know, because New York is just so loud and it’s hard to find that balance off the court.

“I’ve got to say I’m probably good at it compared to other players, so I’m really trying to be in my bubble. The comfort level is hard to describe, because the tournament is so long, you’re basically here for three weeks, so obviously it’s not going to be the same every day. 

“But I feel pretty happy with my performance in Cincinnati, I’m trying to get some confidence from that. There are a lot of positive vibes in the team.”

So there should be. Opening rounds can be a tricky business, as Renata Zarazúa demonstrated when she dealt Madison Keys, the reigning Australian Open champion and a former US Open finalist, a 6-7 (10-12), 7-6 (7-3), 7-5 defeat on Monday. 

Keys, the sixth seed, led by a set and 3-0 but was undone by a whopping 89 unforced errors as the Mexican world No 82, who had never previously beaten a top-10 opponent, claimed the biggest win of her career.       

“I feel like today, for the first time in a while, my nerves really got the better of me, and it kind of became a little bit paralysing,” said Keys. “I want to win, but just feeling like winning matters just way too much, and I just couldn’t quite separate myself from that. Once you start playing badly, it just kind of all snowballs.”

The shock result offered another reminder that the kind of early-round consistency Swiatek has made her trademark can never be taken for granted. Not that the six-time grand slam champion is about to get carried away.   

“I’m happy that I had some time to just get used to the conditions and the surface, because for sure it’s different than the practice courts,” she said. “I think it was just a solid match, and I’m happy that I can play another round here.

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Iga Swiatek, a four-time French Open champion who has long regarded the lawns of the All England Club with deep suspicion, staged a Centre Court masterclass on Saturday to win the most one-sided Wimbledon final in more than a century.

The Polish eighth seed demolished Amanda Anisimova of the United States 6-0, 6-0 to win her first Wimbledon title, delivering a performance of such devastating authority and intensity that the whole thing was over in just 57 minutes.

Rarely has the long-running joke about Iga’s bakery – an allusion to the 24-year-old’s signature habit of doling out 6-0 and 6-1 sets, known in tennis parlance as bagels and breadsticks – felt more relevant, or more wildly inappropriate. For while the afternoon was first and foremost about the excellence of Swiatek, another abiding memory will be Anisimova’s tearful anguish at her inability to touch the heights she reached against Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals. 

Instead, the final act of the 23-year-old Floridian’s tournament was a mirror image of the first, Anisimova forced to taste the same bitter draught she had served Yulia Putintseva in a 6-0, 6-0 opening-round win. 

Anisimova was overwhelmed long before Swiatek drilled a final backhand beyond her to confirm a sixth grand slam title. She struggled to compose herself at the final changeover, and in the aftermath of defeat there were distant echoes of the late Jana Novotna’s tears after the 1993 final. Like the Duchess of Kent before her, the Princess of Wales offered words of consolation, telling her to keep her head high.

So she should, for Anisimova has been through much to reach this point. Her father Konstantin died suddenly before her 18th birthday in 2019, and two years ago she took a prolonged break from the game to look after her mental health. Anisimova broke down repeatedly as she looked up to her courtside box to thank her mother Olga – “the most selfless person I know” – for her support down the years. She lost the match, but will have won plenty of admirers. 

Ultimately, though, it was a day when Swiatek etched another indelible impression in the history books. She becomes the first Polish player to win a Wimbledon singles title, and the first to win a grand slam final without conceding a game since Steffi Graf eviscerated Natasha Zvereva at Roland Garros in 1988.

The last woman to claim a Centre Court whitewash in the final was Dorothea Lambert Chambers, who defeated fellow Briton Dora Boothby to win the fifth of her seven Wimbledon titles in 1911, while no player has dropped fewer than Swiatek’s 35 games en route to the title since Martina Navratilova in 1990. She is once again rubbing shoulders with giants.

The Pole’s achievement was all the more astonishing given that she had never previously advanced beyond the quarter-finals at the All England Club, and had not won a tournament since last summer’s French Open.    

“Who would have expected that?” mused Swiatek after joining Margaret Court and Monica Seles as only the third player to win each of her first six grand slam finals. 

“It’s a lot, you know, especially after a season with a lot of ups and downs and a lot of expectations from the outside that I didn’t really match. Winning Wimbledon is something that is just surreal. I feel like tennis keeps surprising me, and I keep surprising myself.”

Yet it wasn’t and wasn’t a surprise.

Notwithstanding last month’s run to the final of Bad Homburg, few would have picked out Swiatek as the winner beforehand. But she built her form steadily over the course of the fortnight, growing in stature with each round after an early wobble against Caty McNally, and carried the experience of five previous grand slam victories into the final. Her familiarity with the big occasion gave Swiatek an edge every bit as significant as her tactical nous, vastly improved serving and the peerless movement that, with the help of the experienced Belgian coach Wim Fisette, she has finally adapted to the unique demands of grass-court tennis. 

It was evident from the outset that Anisimova was a shadow of the devastating force that had toppled Sabalenka two days earlier. Faced by the might of the Belarusian world No 1’s huge serves and heavy groundstrokes, she had fought fire with fire; paralysed by nerves and still feeling the effects of that draining semi-final battle, she was barely able to muster a spark against Swiatek. 

Anisimova is blessed with one of the finest backhands in the women’s game, yet she began by ballooning a double-hander beyond the baseline and went on to miss a trio of forehands in the face of her opponent’s bold, aggressive returning. With two minutes gone, the tone was set.

Equipped with that early break and peerless when it comes to stretching a lead, Swiatek capitalised on a flurry of backhand errors from Anisimova to consolidate her advantage, before a double fault cost the American a second break. In short space, she would become the first player to concede the first set of a women’s final without winning a game since 1983, when Martina Navratilova swept through the opener against Andrea Jaeger in equally magisterial fashion.

It was a case of double jeopardy for Anisimova. On the one hand, she had to deal with her own malfunctioning service: she landed just 45% of her first serves, winning barely a quarter of those points, and fared little behind her second delivery, with a 34% success rate. On the other, she faced an opponent who was not only dominant on serve but also constantly dragging her into the corners, forcing her off balance and denying her time to land the kind of heavy baseline blows that had done for Sabalenka. 

“She came out playing very, very well, so all credit to her,” said Anisimova. “She was able to really play the game she wanted.”

The same could not be said of the misfiring American, who desperately needed to establish a foothold in the contest at the start of the second set but, repeatedly dragged deep into her forehand corner, instead committed another spate of forced and unforced errors. There would be no way back. Anisimova acknowledged she had been “a bit frozen with nerves”, but identified weariness as the greater obstacle.  

“I was nervous, but it wasn’t anything out of this world,” she said. “If anything, I was more excited to go out there and compete. I think I was just really fatigued. I could feel it also in my warm-up this morning. I had to take a break after every single rally out there in my warm-up… To be able to last two weeks in a grand slam is definitely something that you need to work a lot on.”

It is a discipline long since mastered by Swiatek. After a chequered season by her own exalted standards – however absurd such a statement might seem, given her semi-final finishes at the Australian and French Opens and at big events in Qatar, Indian Wells and Madrid – the Pole has largely flown under the radar at the All England Club. For a player who arrived at the previous three editions of the tournament as the freshly crowned Roland Garros champion, world No 1 and top seed, it has been an unaccustomed luxury – although she was not about to start ranking her grand slam achievements. 

“I think the fact it’s on grass, for sure it makes it more special and more unexpected, so for sure it feels like the emotions are bigger,” Swiatek admitted. “At Roland Garros, I know I can play well and I know I can show it every year. 

“Here, I wasn’t sure of that and I had to prove it to myself. For sure I’m not going to rank [my grand slam wins], because I have so much respect for the other tournaments. I worked really hard to win all the other slams, so there’s no point in choosing between them. 

“But this one and the US Open [in 2022] for sure feel better, because no one expected that. It wasn’t a relief, it was more just good tennis and working to make it happen.”  

Like the quality of her tennis, Swiatek’s work ethic has never been in doubt. But her Wimbledon triumph was also underpinned by hitherto largely unseen qualities: versatility, adaptability, a newfound willingness to slice and block. Patience allied with timely aggression; instinct and improvisation combined with the technical and tactical preparation on which she habitually thrives. Fun, even, for she was never a mere dirtballer or “robot”, as some have uncharitably labelled her. 

“Today I just wanted to enjoy the time that I had on Centre Court and enjoy the last hours of me playing well on grass, because who knows if it’s going to happen again,” said Swiatek. “I just focused on that and I really had fun.”

Swiatek served a one-month ban late last year after unwittingly consuming a contaminated dose of melatonin, costing her the chance to defend points in Japan and China and the loss of the No 1 ranking. The International Tennis Integrity Agency deemed her transgression to be at the lowest end of the range for “no significant fault or negligence”, but Swiatek was deeply affected by the episode and that has, perhaps, been reflected in her tennis. 

Now the smile has returned to her face. She greeted victory with unconfined joy, falling on her back in disbelief before gambolling across Centre Court, and she celebrated exuberantly on retreating to the clubhouse balcony with the Venus Rosewater dish. Above all, her game is once more evolving. There will surely be more afternoons like this.

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In a match-up that drew a ripple of mischievous amusement as it was announced at the conclusion of Friday morning’s draw, Alcaraz will begin his quest for a third successive crown against Fabio Fognini, the gifted but unpredictable Italian whose languid shot-making belies a notoriously fiery disposition.

Fognini has hinted that this is likely to be his final year on the tour and, while it would be stretching it to suggest an upset could be on the cards, the 38-year-old will undoubtedly relish the prospect of facing a big name on Centre Court in what may be his last match at Wimbledon. The pair have met twice previously, both times on red clay in Rio de Janeiro, with Alcaraz winning on each occasion. 

The Spanish second seed is projected to face Holger Rune of Denmark in the quarter-finals, with either Alexander Zverev, the German world No 3, or Taylor Fritz, the fifth seed, barring his path to another final. 

Krejcikova, meanwhile, was drawn against Alexandra Eala of the Philippines, the 20-year-old left-hander whose breakout run to the semi-finals of the Miami Open earlier this year included victories over Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys and Iga Swiatek. The 74th-ranked Eala, who has made encouraging progress on grass ahead of her main draw debut at Wimbledon, will cross swords with Australian teenager Maya Joint for the Eastbourne Open title on Saturday.

It represents a tough start for Krejcikova, who has barely played since the turn of the year due to a back injury and withdrew from her scheduled Eastbourne quarter-final against Varvara Gracheva this week with a thigh problem, raising further doubts about her fitness. The 29-year-old Czech, currently ranked 17th, defeated Jasmine Paolini in last year’s Wimbledon final to claim her second grand slam title following her French Open victory of four years ago. 

Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 1, will open her challenge against Carson Branstine, a 24-year-old Canadian qualifier. The 27-year-old Belarusian could meet former champion Marketa Vondrousova, who defeated her in straights sets in the semi-finals of the Berlin Open last weekend, in round three. Sabalenka is projected to face Madison Keys, the Australian Open champion, in the last eight, with either Paolini or Qinwen Zheng, the Olympic champion and fifth seed, potentially awaiting in the semi-finals.

In the lower half of the draw, second seed Coco Gauff will begin her campaign against the 42nd-ranked Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine and could play former world No 1 Victoria Azarenka in round two. 

Gauff, 21, is expected to face Swiatek in the last eight – although the Pole, who opens against Polina Kudermetova, may first have to get past either Danielle Collins or Marta Kostyuk in the third round, followed by Elena Rybakina, the 2022 champion. The American, who won her second major title at the French Open earlier this month, is seeded to meet fellow countrywoman Jessica Pegula, who starts against Elisabetta Cocciaretto of Italy, in the last four.

Elsewhere in the men’s draw, top seed Jannik Sinner opens against Luca Nardi and is expected to meet another Italian opponent, Lorenzo Musetti, in the last eight. Sinner could then be in line for a reunion with Novak Djokovic, who defeated him in the semi-finals two years ago. First, though, Djokovic may need to see off Britain’s Jack Draper, the fourth seed, who gave the seven-time champion an opening-round scare on his main draw debut in 2021. 

With his thunderous southpaw serve and heavy forehand, Draper would seem to have a game ideally suited to grass. But the 23-year-old, who will be carrying the hopes of the home nation despite never previously going beyond round two in three visits to SW19, has been handed an onerous draw. Following an opening-round assignment against Sebastián Báez, the world No 38, Draper could meet former finalist Marin Cilic, followed by Alexander Bublik – who defeated him at the French Open earlier this month and won the Halle Open on grass last weekend – and the rising Czech teenager Jakub Mensik.

Emma Raducanu, who aggravated a lingering back injury during her recent quarter-final run at Queen’s Club, has been handed a similarly difficult path. The former US Open champion, who reached the fourth for the second time last year, begins against 17-year-old wildcard Mimi Xu, a former British national junior champion. Assuming she survives unscathed, Raducanu will face either the resurgent Vondrousova, who won the Berlin Open title last week, or the American 32nd seed McCartney Kessler – followed, in all likelihood, by Sabalenka.

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But Iga Swiatek was dethroned in humbling fashion at Roland Garros on Thursday, Aryna Sabalenka ending the Polish defending champion’s remarkable 26-match winning run on the Parisian clay with a 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-0 victory as she advanced to the French Open final for the first time. 

Throughout her reign of terror in the French capital, Swiatek has often swept through sets without dropping a single game in a set – the dreaded “bagel”, as it is known in tennis parlance.

Jokes about “Iga’s Bakery” have been plentiful, but for once it was the 24-year-old who had too much on her plate, Sabalenka producing near-perfect tennis to dominate the decider so thoroughly that she dropped just six points and, remarkably, made no unforced errors.

“Six-love, what can I say?” said Sabalenka. “It couldn’t be more perfect than that.” 

Indeed not. It was a brutal exhibition of power tennis from the Belarusian world No 1, who began the afternoon in commanding vein, blasting her way into an early 4-1 lead, and ended it equally emphatically after being drawn into a more protracted battle. Through to a third straight grand slam final, a feat last achieved by Serena Williams in 2016, Sabalenka will face second seed Coco Gauff on Saturday with a fourth major title – and first away from the hard courts she favours – firmly in her sights.

“It’s going to mean everything to me and my team, because I have to say that almost my whole life, I’ve been told the clay court is not my thing, and then I didn’t have any confidence,” said Sabalenka. 

“In the past, I don’t know how many years, we’ve been able to develop my game so much, so I feel really comfortable on this surface and actually enjoy playing on clay.”

It didn’t always look like Sabalenka was having fun, particularly when she was unable to convert points for a 5-1 lead. Determined to take the contest by the scruff of the neck, she achieved that ambition early on with a combination of irresistible serving and deep, bludgeoned returns that landed at Swiatek’s feet almost before she had completed her service motion. On a drizzly day in Paris, the closed roof on Court Philippe Chatrier seemed to play into the 27-year-old’s hands, allowing her free rein to take on her shots unencumbered by the swirling wind outside.

But as Swiatek chiselled her way back into contention, moving inside the baseline, showing greater aggression on the return, and belatedly landing her first serve with greater frequency, Sabalenka made plain her frustration, muttering to herself furiously and casting dark looks towards her team. Swiatek levelled at 4-4 before a late exchange of breaks brought up a tiebreak. The Belarusian bossed the shootout, but now she knew she was in a match.

Though down a set, Swiatek could draw encouragement from the knowledge that she had navigated a similar challenge two rounds earlier against Elena Rybakina, who also set a daunting early pace and used her power to rush the defending champion into error.

It is widely acknowledged that Swiatek is never more vulnerable than when she is denied time, and in that respect Sabalenka, whose success is measured in the milliseconds it takes for her blunderbuss strokes to work their destructive magic, represents the ultimate challenge. But there is a reason Swiatek went into the contest with just two losses from 42 previous appearances at Roland Garros, and in the second set she showed her mettle.

Returning with greater depth and penetration, Swiatek secured an early break with a pair of rifled backhand winners, only to relinquish the advantage immediately with a poor service game.

But when Sabalenka replied in kind, producing an error-strewn game to concede a second break, Swiatek was not about to repeat her mistake. She instead consolidated the advantage with panache, producing a first ace of the afternoon, an exquisite piece of touch on the half-volley, and an extraordinary, lunging drop shot. In the minutes that followed, Swiatek produced her finest tennis of the fortnight and, arguably, her entire, chequered season. 

Without a title since defeating Jasmine Paolini in last year’s final, the four-time champion has slipped from first to fifth in the rankings, and will fall to seventh next week. In recent months, she has suffered losses to Jelena Ostapenko, Mirra Andreeva, Coco Gauff and Danielle Collins, respectively ending title defences in Qatar, Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome.

But as she became bolder in the baseline exchanges, producing some sharp touches at the net and improving markedly on serve – where she won 71% of points behind her first delivery, up from 43% in the first set, and more than doubled her success rate behind the second – there were glimpses of the Swiatek of old. It made Sabalenka’s superiority down the stretch all the more sobering.

“She still served really well, I feel like I served the same and she read my serve much better, so I probably won less points on the return,” said Swiatek. “I think I lost my intensity a bit and she just played pretty strong, as in the first set, but I didn’t react to that well and just couldn’t push back.

“The pace from her was super fast, she for sure, especially at the beginning of the match, played as hard as possible and pretty risky, so it was just hard to get into any rally. [In the second set] I was able to do that, so more things happened, it wasn’t just like serve and one shot, or return and one shot, I could build the rally.  

“In the third set I feel like we came back to what happened in the first, and she for sure used her chances and I didnt really keep up what I was doing in the second set.”

There were no such difficulties for Gauff, who ended the extraordinary run of French wildcard Loïs Boisson, the world No 361. The Frenchwoman, who carried the hopes of a nation after defeating three seeded players en route to the semi-finals including Jessica Pegula, the world No 3, and the sixth-ranked Mirra Andreeva, but struggled to reproduce that form as she slumped to a 6-1, 6-2 defeat. Gauff will now attempt to claim the title that eluded her three years ago, when she was routed by Swiatek in the final. 

“My first final here, I was super nervous, and I kind of wrote myself off before the match even happened,” said Gauff, 21, who defeated Sabalenka to win the 2023 US Open. “Obviously, here, I have a lot more confidence just from playing a grand slam final before and doing well in one.”

Whether that will be enough to stop Sabalenka is another matter.

“It was a big match, and it felt like a final, but I know that the job is not done yet,” said Sabalenka. “I have to go out there on Saturday, and I have to fight and I have to bring my best tennis, and I have to work for that title. 

“I’m ready; I’m ready to go out, and I’m ready to fight. And I’m ready to do everything it’s going to take to get the win.”

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“No,” she replied without missing a beat.

She was kidding no one. All present knew Swiatek would rather face former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, whom she had beaten four times in eight attempts, than cross swords once with her Latvian nemesis Jelena Ostapenko, the victor on all six occasions they have met. The Polish defending champion managed to keep a straight face for all of two seconds before dissolving into laughter. 

“Am I a good liar?” she enquired with a grin. “Let’s say it doesn’t matter, really. Oh my God, I couldn’t play poker.”

No doubt Swiatek’s mood brightened further when Rybakina went on to dismiss Ostapenko in straight sets. Once in the Latvian’s shoes herself, however, it was not long before her mood dropped. Less than three-quarters of an hour, in fact – the time it took for the big-hitting Rybakina to blaze her way into a seemingly unassailable 6-1, 2-0 lead. By that stage, Swiatek was showing signs of the kind of agitation that has surfaced with unwelcome frequency in this season of struggles. It did not bode well.

This time last year, the 24-year-old was queen of all she surveyed, ranked No 1 and so dominant on her beloved red clay that she racked up 19th straight victories on the surface, winning titles in Madrid and Rome before claiming her fourth Roland Garros crown in five years. Now, a set and a break down against an opponent in irresistible form, Swiatek looked on course to suffer the heaviest defeat by a defending champion since Serena Williams salvaged just four games against Garbiñe Muguruza in 2014. An ignominious exit beckoned, but Swiatek was not done.

“I was feeling pretty bad, so I kind of accepted that I could lose the match,” she said. “But it didn’t change the fact that I wanted to fight for it.”

Fight she did, somehow summoning the will and tenacity to turn both the tide and, quite possibly, her entire season, as she recovered to claim an extraordinary 1-6, 6-3, 7-5 victory. It was her 25th in succession at Porte d’Auteuil, a milestone only Chris Evert, Monica Seles, Bjorn Borg and Rafael Nadal have reached since the dawn of the open era in 1968. Tough days lie ahead, but there is a growing sense of momentum around the world No 5.

“I think I needed that kind of win to feel these feelings that I’m able to win under pressure, and even if it’s not going the right way, still turn the match around to win it,” said Swiatek. 

“For sure, it’s a great confirmation for me. I for sure wanted to have a match like that. Obviously it’s great to also have full control over the match, but against great players it’s not always going to be possible. I’m happy that I fought, and I also problem-solved on court.”.

The most pressing problem, having fallen behind at the start of the second set, was how to arrest the relentless tide of winners flowing from Rybakina’s racket and gain a foothold in the contest. Swiatek’s solution was to raise her physical intensity, chasing down every lost cause and forever forcing her opponent to play one more ball. She retreated further behind the baseline to return the 12th-seeded Kazakhstani’s penetrating serve and found greater shape on her forehand. She used her venomous topspin to break the lines and push Rybakina back off the baseline, and ramped up her footwork and aggression. 

Swiatek also rode her luck, first when Rybakina netted an inviting forehand volley at break point down in the fourth game, then when she survived a service game in which she produced three double faults. Suddenly, Rybakina was no longer playing at the same exalted level, errors creeping into her game as her focus wavered for the first time.

“There was a moment in the second set, when I had the volley on top of the net and I lost, it was a big turnaround,” said Rybakina. “She stepped in, she started to play more aggressive and I was down already.

“Also, physically, I started with very good intensity, I was aggressive. In the second set it was quickly she went up, so it was tough to come back. Generally, I think I wasn’t pushing well with the legs on the serve, so it was a bit tough.”

The decider was nonetheless a tight affair, and Swiatek did well not to let her focus waver after the ninth game, when both players thought the Pole had secured a break that would have left her serving for the match. The chair umpire, Kader Nouni, had other ideas, correctly ruling that Rybakina had not double-faulted as called, and the 25-year-old made the most of the reprieve, holding for 5-4. 

Swiatek, though, was not to be denied. Serving to stay in the match, she held to love, then capitalised on a string of unforced errors from Rybakina to move within touching distance of the last eight. After sealing victory with a vicious cross-court forehand winner, she clenched her fists and roared with delight. 

Swiatek now faces a quarter-final showdown with Elina Svitolina, who saved three match points in a 4-6, 7-6 (8-6), 6-1 win over last year’s runner-up Jasmine Paolini. Two summers ago, the Ukrainian defeated her at the same stage of Wimbledon. But as this match demonstrated, Swiatek is a different creature on the red dirt; having defied the odds here, she could just be tougher than ever to stop.

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If ever there was a time and place to alter that narrative, however, it was at this US Open of myriad upsetsand notable American success. And on Wednesday night, the 30-year-old New Yorker did just that, producing a poised, patient and disciplined performance to see off Swiatek in straight sets and reach her first grand slam semi-final. Tellingly, for all her evident joy at emulating the success of her compatriots Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe, whose meeting on Friday will ensure an American presence in a men’s singles final at Flushing Meadows for the first time since 2006, Pegula’s overriding emotion was relief at ending her quarter-final hoodoo.

“I’ve been [to the last eight] so many freaking times, I just kept losing – but to great players, to girls that went on and won the tournament,” said Pegula after her 6-2, 6-4 victory. “So I know everyone keeps asking me about it, but I was like, ‘I don’t know what else to do, I just need to get there again and win the match.’ Thank God I was able to do it and finally – finally! – I can say, ‘Semi-finalist.’”

The foundations for that breakthrough were laid early. With 21 minutes gone, Swiatek had racked up a dozen unforced errors and been broken twice, each time on a double fault. Pegula, meanwhile, was commanding the baseline exchanges, maintaining immaculate length with her flat, powerful groundstrokes, refusing to give ground or be rushed. Tellingly, Swiatek did not hit a single winner in those first four games. By the end of the set, the Pole had put just 36% of her first serves into play and was chattering agitatedly to her team. It was a dream start for Pegula.

“I wanted to come out playing the way I wanted to play,” said Pegula. “I had an idea in my mind of what I learned from the last time I played her at [the WTA] Finals, and [I wanted to] play within myself and then just see where she was at. 

“I could tell right away that she was frustrated on the serve, and then I was like, ‘OK.’ I wanted to attack the serve pretty early, but it depends on how she’s serving: am I going to get a lot of second serve looks, am I not? So once I saw that [her serve] wasn’t really working that well, I made it a point to really try and step in and try to keep doing that the entire time.

“I started off playing well, so I just kind of tried to stay within myself and then adjust according to how she was playing.”

With a dismal start behind her, Swiatek began the second set in stronger vein, running Pegula from pillar to post to seal a convincing early hold. But the American world No 6, who has worked hard to improve her movement, remained unperturbed. As Swiatek lapsed back into error, Pegula broke to go ahead again, and although the top seed hit back immediately, there was a palpable lack of confidence about her play, particularly off the forehand. With the ball flying off Swiatek’s strings and Pegula showing some resourceful defensive play, things came to a head in the seventh game. Fighting to raise her level, Swiatek saved two break points but could not fend off a third, drilling a forehand into the alley off a slow, floated slice. There would be no way back. 

“It’s never easy to play against Jess,” said Swiatek. “She has a tricky ball, because it’s pretty low and pretty flat. I wouldn’t say she changed a lot, because it’s impossible to change your game style. 

“But for sure she was more solid than me and making much less mistakes, so was putting pressure with that. Usually I’m able to push it back, or put pressure on myself, but today I just made too many mistakes.”

From her buggy-whip forehand and mental and physical intensity to her domination at Roland Garros, where she has won four of her five grand slam titles, Swiatek has often been likened to her hero, Rafael Nadal. Over the course of a difficult summer, another point of comparison has become discernible. Just as Nadal used to dominate the clay-court season only to find the tank depleted later in the season, so Swiatek – crowned champion in Madrid, Rome and Paris before suffering unexpected defeats to Yulia Putintseva at Wimbledon and Qinwen Zheng at the Olympics – appears to be paying the price for a successful summer on the red dirt. 

Has the Pole hit the wall? Despite her improvement in the second set, this was a startlingly poor display by her standards. Swiatek’s serve, the mainstay of her progress as she advanced to the last eight without dropping a set, largely deserted her, the 23-year-old winning just 56% of points behind her first delivery. By the end of the night, she had committed 41 unforced errors – the same number she made in the opening round against Kamilla Rakhimova, with the crucial difference being that here she managed only a dozen winners, 18 fewer than she conjured against the Russian. It was, as Swiatek acknowledged, too much to overcome.

“I was telling myself that I can still play well from the baseline and I’ve had many tournaments when I didn’t serve well and I managed to win anyway,” said Swiatek. “But I probably didn’t find the right solution, because I couldn’t push on my serve. Also, I wasn’t that solid from the baseline to have a backup like that. You’re not going to win if you make so many mistakes.”

Not against Pegula, at any rate; not with the American in this form. Pegula will now face Karolina Muchova, who underwent wrist surgery in February but returned to the semi-finals for a second straight year with a 6-1, 6-4 win over Beatriz Haddad Maia. Like Pegula, the 28-year-old Czech, unseeded but with talent in abundance, has yet to drop a set. It will be far from straightforward, but it is an opportunity: three weeks ago in Cincinnati, Pegula won the first career meeting between the pair in three sets. A maiden grand slam final could arrive a lot quicker for Pegula than her first semi-final did. 

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The former champion, all but one of whose five grand slam titles have come at Roland Garros, will face Jessica Pegula for a place in the semi-finals on Wednesday night, just as she did in 2022. Swiatek ran out a 6-3, 7-6 (7-4) winner that day – an encouraging precedent from her perspective, no doubt, but one unlikely to have any bearing on the rematch, given that she barely recalls it.

“I don’t remember a lot,” said Swiatek. “I remember it was the first match in 2022 where I felt like the ball is kind of listening to me a little bit more, and that’s the only thing. I don’t remember [the] specifics of how that match went, I don’t even remember the score, so I can’t really say a lot. I haven’t watched this game [since], so that’s why probably.”

There is another reason why Swiatek’s memory of the fortnight is based more on impressions than details. Having arrived in New York that year complaining that the balls were too light to control, her title-winning run was a largely pragmatic, attritional affair rather than a Carlos Alcaraz-style highlights reel. The satisfaction she felt afterwards owed more to the outcome than the experience.

“I wouldn’t say I played my best game or whatever that year, so it was a big surprise for me that I could win this tournament, because I felt like I kind of won it ugly,” said Swiatek after advancing to the quarter-finals with a far from unsightly 6-4, 6-1 victory over Liudmila Samsonova.

“That’s why I probably [don’t remember]. But I was fighting every match for every ball, and my defence was pretty great. So on the other hand, I understand why I won this tournament.”

Should she repeat that achievement on Saturday, Swiatek is likely to recall her latest campaign in New York with greater clarity. Since a shaky opening match against Kamilla Rakhimova, a lucky loser who came within a whisker of forcing a third set, the former champion has progressed through the upper half of the draw with calm authority, brushing aside Ena Shibahara, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Samsonova in straight sets. This time, though, her success has been built less on an ability to scrap and retrieve, and more on the excellence of her vastly improved service.

That might seem an unlikely claim to make about a player more noted for her dominant play off the ground and wing-heeled athleticism. The evidence, however, is compelling. Swiatek remains unbroken across her past three matches. No player left in the draw has won more service games, and among that cohort of survivors only Qinwen Zheng – dismissed 6-1, 6-2 by Aryna Sabalenka in Tuesday’s night session – had claimed more points behind her first delivery going into the quarter-finals (80% to 79%). On second serve, meanwhile, Swiatek leads the field with a 64% success rate.

Those statistics are indicative of the work the 23-year-old has put in behind the scenes to produce a smoother and more compact motion, the fruits of which are evident in the five titles she has won this season, including a fourth in five years at Roland Garros. Yet having a good serve and knowing what to do with it are two very different things.

A service-dominated first set against the 16th-seeded Samsonova showcased Swiatek’s growing variety and tactical nous with ball in hand. While touching speeds of up to 115mph, the Pole also leavened the mix with regular changes of pace and direction. That was never more evident than when, eschewing her natural tendency to pull the opponent wide in the advantage court, she closed out two consecutive first-set services games with devastatingly accurate serves down the centre line. The deft manner in which Swiatek navigated such moments laid the foundations for a victory that, once she broke for the first time to claim the set, assumed an air of inevitably.

 “At the beginning I felt like we were playing kind of men’s style, just holding our serves,” Swiatek told Rennae Stubbs on court afterwards. “But I knew that if I kept pushing I would get some chances to break Mila. That happened in the last game of the first set, and I’m happy that I was there to close it. In the second set I was leading, and I just wanted to keep being focused, not let my mind drift off.”

Samsonova may lack the grand slam pedigree of Jelena Ostapenko, the former French Open champion who defeated Swiatek in the fourth round last year, but the Russian is not without the tools to discomfit Swiatek on a fast hard court. Taking a leaf out of the Ostapenko playbook, she did all she could to rush the top seed with her flat, powerful groundstrokes and heavy serve, and in the fifth game she threatened to make inroads, some mighty hitting bringing up 0-30 on Swiatek’s serve. The Pole refused to be flustered, however, setting up her forehand with a pair of solid first serves.

It was ideal preparation for facing Pegula, another clean, flat ball-striker. Swiatek is in no danger of becoming a servebot just yet, but the ability to win the occasional free point on serve will do her no harm as she seeks a seventh win over the 30-year-old American in what will be their 10th meeting. Notably, all three of Pegula’s wins have come on hard courts, although the pair have not played since last November’s showdown at the WTA Finals in Cancún, where she was on the wrong end of a 6-1, 6-0 drubbing.

Seeded sixth at Flushing Meadows, Pegula has likewise made improvements to her game since that meeting. Her outstanding form over the North American hard-court swing, which has brought a successful defence of her Canadian Open title and a final appearance in Cincinnati, has seen her defeated just once in her past 14 matches, and her impressive 6-4, 6-2 win over Diana Shnaider in the previous round suggests Swiatek will have her work cut out.

“I feel like my movement has really improved, which has really helped me stay in a lot of these points and these sets and these games and be super consistent,” said Pegula. “I think I’ve been serving pretty well. Even if it’s not working, I’ve been getting myself out of service games by serving smart or serving well in big moments.”

On Wednesday night, the American can expect to see those skills mirrored at the opposite end of the court. Like Swiatek, she has yet to drop a set; unlike Swiatek, she has failed to advance beyond a grand slam quarter-final in six previous attempts. Two of those defeats came at the hands of the Pole, and her return game will need to be at its best if she is to alter that narrative. We are unlikely to see a repeat of the 13 breaks the players shared in their quarter-final meeting two years ago.

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The tennis equivalent of a hitwoman, Swiatek routinely metes out drubbings of the kind Pavlyuchenkova experienced at the Foro Italico. And when the former French Open finalist instantly fell a break behind, it was hard not to fear for her again. That feeling deepened in the fourth game, when Swiatek stabbed back a return on the stretch that, spinning violently, cleared the net before bouncing back into the Polish world No 1’s side of the court, leaving the dismayed Pavlyuchenkova flailing at air.

Despite that stroke of good fortune, however – “I would be giving too much credit to myself if I would say I had control over it,” Swiatek later admitted – the second meeting between the pair was, as the 6-4, 6-2 scoreline would suggest, markedly different to the first. Not least because if anyone was dodging bullets, it was Swiatek, who narrowly avoided being poleaxed at the net for the second time in a month.

In an echo of the controversial moment at the Paris Olympics when Danielle Collins drove a passing shot straight into Swiatek’s midriff, the top seed was forced into evasive action after chasing down a drop volley at the start of the second set. As the ball popped up invitingly, Pavluchenkova stepped in and slammed it straight at the startled Pole from point-blank range, before turning on her heel without a hint of apology. Swiatek managed to get her racket in the way, but she was evidently unimpressed, shooting Pavlyuchenkova a look that could have melted glaciers.

It proved to be a turning point. Up to that moment, the only difference between the players was a single break of serve. Pavlyuchenkova had left no stone unturned in her quest for an effective strategy, throwing herself into one of the most dangerous backhands in the game, nailing big serves and forehands, reminding all present that she has been a quarter-finalist at all four majors in doubles, as well as singles, with some fine touches at the net. But when Swiatek unleashed an unanswerable forehand on the next point, the impassioned cry of “Jazda!” that accompanied it – “Let’s go!” in Polish – spoke of a renewed determination. In short space, she reeled off 10 points in a row to establish what would prove an unassailable lead. All that remained was for Pavlyuchenkova to offer what looked like a belated apology at the net afterwards.

“For sure I was happy with the performance, because I felt like she’s a player who can play a really powerful first shot,” said Swiatek, without a trace of irony. “So I wanted to be ready for that, and I was. I’m happy that I was in control of the match.”

So she should be. Through to the second week for the fourth year in a row and yet to drop a set, Swiatek has improved steadily since her error-strewn opening-round win over Kamilla Rakhimova. The assured nature of her victory over the 25th-seeded Pavlyuchenkova – a former junior winner at Flushing Meadows enjoying a renascent summer after defeating Qinwen Zheng, the Olympic champion, en route to the Cincinnati quarter-finals – bodes well for her challenge for a second title in three years, which will continue on Monday against another Russian, Liudmila Samsonova. Swiatek has won all three of their previous meetings.

If further encouragement were needed for the world No 1, it came in the form of a pre-match visit from Serena Williams, the 23-time grand slam champion and another player who knew what it meant to be a stone-cold killer on court.

“She’s really nice and really positive,” said Swiatek. “I’m happy that she’s following tennis, and my games. She told me that she’s cheering for me, so it’s always nice to hear that from somebody like Serena.”

Swiatek enjoys listening to heavy rock as she makes her way into battle. While she may not be updating her pre-match playlist to include the surf-rock vibes of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack any time soon, she could do worse than take her cue from a line in the movie: “I wanna dance, I wanna win. I want that trophy, so dance good.”

So far, she is.

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A perennial master of the lopsided scoreline, the Polish world No 1 sped through the opening four games against Kamilla Rakhimova, a lucky loser ranked 104, for the loss of just three points. With less than a quarter of an hour gone, fans were poised to declare Iga’s bakery once again open for business.

Swiatek, of course, is no great fan of that trope – an allusion to her habit of doling out 6-0 and 6-1 sets, known in tennis parlance as bagels and breadsticks – because she believes it is disrespectful to her opponents. And in the event, it was not required.

Rakhimova saw to that. Encouraged by an abrupt dip in Swiatek’s level, the tenacious 22-year-old Russian shook off her initial nerves, rapidly growing in stature until it was all the top seed could do to parlay her initial lead into a one-set advantage. By the time Swiatek found herself facing three straight set points in the second-set tiebreak, having been broken as she served for victory three games earlier, it felt like anyone’s match.

“I’m happy that I’m through to the second round, because first rounds are never easy,” said the relieved Pole after recovering to complete a 6-4, 7-6 (8-6) victory. “But for sure I want to improve some things and adjust a little bit so I’ll make less mistakes.”

Swiatek, normally the most ruthless of closers, has become uncomfortably familiar with such circumstances of late. Since a magisterial clay-court season culminated with a fourth French Open title in June, the Pole has lost from a set up against Yulia Putintseva at Wimbledon, squandered a 4-0 second-set lead in a straight-sets defeat to Qinwen Zheng at the Olympics, and been forced to a decider by Varvara Gracheva in Cincinnati after holding five match points that would have given her a straight-sets win.

Mistakes were a significant factor in all those matches, and so it was again here, Swiatek’s frustration evident as she sprayed 41 unforced errors, the same number she committed against Gracheva. No wonder her mind drifted back to that contest.

“I felt like I had everything under control,” Swiatek told Eurosport in her native tongue, “and then I had flashbacks from the match against Gracheva in Cincinnati.

“I think I could have closed the match calmly, but there were so many errors. I didn’t feel comfortable enough to make everything look smooth.”

As Swiatek acknowledged in her on-court interview, she is still adjusting to the conditions in New York, where neither the slick courts nor the frenetic pace of life sit comfortably with her natural disposition.

Rhythm and range will come, but more alarming for the moment is the 23-year-old’s struggle for consistency. This was a far cry from last year’s US Open defeat to Jelena Ostapenko, when Swiatek was rushed into error after error by the Latvian’s powerful, incisive ball-striking. Rakhimova, who was defeated by Australia’s Priscilla Hon in the final round of qualifying, spent much of the match simply trying to hang on as a deluge of mighty groundstrokes rained down. Yet her tireless running and determination to keep putting one more ball in play reaped dividends; Swiatek may have dictated much of the match, but she rarely controlled it. As a result, Rakhimova remained in contention until the final ball.

Intriguingly, Swiatek has kept her counsel on the tournament’s decision to revert to a lighter ball. Two years ago, the Pole described the regular duty Wilson balls once again in use this year as “horrible”. Her reservations did not prevent her from winning the title, but they undoubtedly contributed to a switch to the same heavy duty ball used in the men’s draw at last year’s US Open, and it remains to be seen how the abandonment of that experiment will affect her game.

The initial evidence would suggest that, while Swiatek may be less comfortable off the ground with a lighter ball, she is benefiting on serve. The Pole could have landed her first delivery more frequently against Rakhimova, but her win percentage was a healthy 71%. Still more significant was the effectiveness of her second serve. Swiatek’s rearing kicker caused Rakhimova all manner of problems, her success rate of 69% boding well for the challenges that lie ahead. The most immediate of those will come in round two against Ena Shibahara of Japan, who defeated Australia’s Daria Saville 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (10-8).

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In an unsettled, error-strewn performance at Roland Garros, where she has won the French Open in four of the past five years, the Polish world No 1 slipped to a shock straight-sets loss to Qinwen Zheng of China. The defeat ends a run of 25 straight victories for Swiatek on the Parisian clay, where she was last beaten by Maria Sakkari in 2021. 

With her 6-2, 7-5 victory, her sole success in seven meetings with Swiatek, Zheng becomes the first Chinese player in history to reach an Olympic singles final. The 21-year-old, a debutant at the Games, will now face either Donna Vekic or Anna Karolina Schmiedlova in Saturday’s final.

“I finally showed I could beat the world No 1 on her best surface, at Roland Garros,” said Zheng, who pushed Swiatek to a decider in the last 16 of the French Open two summers ago. “That means everything, because I always knew I could do it. But it’s different that you know you can and that you show it. Today, I really showed it. I’m so proud of myself. I am so proud for my country.”

Swiatek too feels the pride of playing for her country, perhaps a little too keenly. Her father, Tomasz, rowed for Poland in the Seoul Olympics of 1988, competing in the quadruple sculls, and family history appeared to weigh heavily on her here, just as it did three years ago in Tokyo, when she was inconsolable following a second-round loss to Paula Badosa. 

If there were any doubt about how much the chance to compete for a gold medal at her favourite venue meant to the 23-year-old, it was dispelled by the evident anxiety in her play. By the 36 unforced errors she made, many of them on her normally uber-reliable backhand. By the way she was unable to capitalise on a 4-0 lead in the second set. By her inability to deal with Zheng’s changes of pace. By the way she broke down afterwards in an interview with Eurosport Poland before declining to speak to the written press.

“I had a hole in my backhand,” said Swiatek, who certainly could have done without the horrible shanked return off that wing that cost her the chance to bring up two break points as Zheng served for the match. “It happens rarely, because it’s usually my most solid stroke.

“I was not technically well positioned because of the stress, and the fact that I played my games day by day. We didn’t have time to adjust that and work on that. I know that’s not the justification, but I tried to correct that during the match. Today, it didn’t work at all. So she used that to win the game.”

Whatever the deficiencies in Swiatek’s game on the day, the excellence of Zheng was undeniable. She handled the pressure of the occasion magnificently, playing with clarity and purpose when she fell behind in the second set, and showed the courage of her convictions in the key moments. That was never more apparent than when Swiatek held a break point to send the second set into a tiebreak. Just as she had done late in her victory over Angelique Kerber in the previous round, Zheng conjured a wonderful drop shot to turn the tide back in her favour, wrong-footing Swiatek, who could not control her attempted pick-up. Moments later, Zheng was falling back in triumph on the clay, another echo of her win against Kerber.

“From 4-0, I think the key was just to play every single point,” said Zheng. “I remember before when I was at this stage, I [would] let it go. I [would] say, ‘OK, I’ve lost this set, let’s fight for the third.’ But today, no. I didn’t have this mentality. I said, ‘I’m just going to fight every single point. Let’s see what’s going to happen. I’m going to play smart, wait for my chance.’ Little by little, I started to get back into the match.”

On Saturday, Zheng, the runner-up at this year’s Australian Open, will bring that newfound mental steel into what she will surely regard as the biggest match of her career. On this evidence, she will take some stopping.

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