After winning her first French Open out of season in October as an unseeded teenager, Iga Swiatek proved that was no fluke by winning the title again in the spring as an overwhelming favorite.
Swiatek, the No. 1 seed from Poland, cemented her status as the game’s dominant player by defeating Coco Gauff of the United States, 6-1, 6-3, in Saturday’s women’s final.
Swiatek has been an irresistible force on any surface for the last four months, but red clay is her favorite playground. She took command of Saturday’s women’s final from the start to win her 35th straight match and sixth straight tournament.
Gauff, in her first Grand Slam singles final at age 18, had not dropped a set in the tournament, but she also had not faced a player ranked in the top 30. The step up proved far too big on Saturday as Gauff lost to Swiatek for the third time in three encounters.
Just four years ago, they both played in the French Open girls tournament, with Gauff winning the title and Swiatek losing in the semifinals. But Swiatek, nearly three years Gauff’s elder, has stormed to the front of the women’s game since then with her aggressive style, powerful package of skills and detail-oriented approach to training.
She is one of the first tennis players to travel with a full-time performance psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, and despite finishing in the top 10 last year, she switched coaches in the off-season, hiring Tomasz Wiktorowski, who was working as a television analyst in Poland after many years of coaching retired Polish star Agnieszka Radwanska.
Her new team has clicked quickly, and she has not lost since February, compiling a 42-3 record in 2022 and winning the titles in Doha, Indian Wells, Miami, Stuttgart, Rome and now Paris, where she broke through in 2020, winning her first major title without losing a set.
That French Open was played in the autumn after being postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. It was played without spectators, and Swiatek’s thunderous shots echoed through the all-but-empty Chatrier Court in the final rounds. But this has been a much more festive edition, with crowds making up for lost sporting events and packing the grounds and courts at Roland Garros from the start.
There were shouts and murmurs aplenty on Saturday as the two young stars arrived on the red clay with plenty of chants of “Coco” but also plenty of support for “Iga” from the large bloc of Polish fans clad in red and white.
But Gauff did not give her support group much to cheer for in the early going, losing her serve in a hurry in the opening game with a series of errors and one very edgy double fault. Swiatek was not at her sharpest early but as she has been throughout her streak, she was the more aggressive, proactive player.
