It all came so seemingly easy for Iga Swiatek last season — two Grand Slam trophies, eight titles overall, a 37-match winning streak, a lengthy stay at No. 1 in the rankings.
Those accomplishments made everyone else expect constant
greatness from Swiatek, which she can’t do anything about. They also changed
the way she approached big moments, and a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Wimbledon champion
Elena Rybakina in the Australian Open’s fourth round Sunday made Swiatek wonder
whether she needs to reassess her outlook.
“I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach
these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to
try to chill out a little bit more,” Swiatek said. “I felt the pressure, and I
felt that ‘I don’t want to lose’ instead of ‘I want to win.’”
So there will not be a showdown between Swiatek and No. 7
seed Coco Gauff in the quarterfinals at Melbourne Park. Instead, it will be
Rybakina taking on 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko, a 7-5, 6-3
winner against Gauff, with a semifinal berth at stake.
“I kept her under so much pressure,” Ostapenko said.
Add Swiatek’s loss to Week 1 exits by Ons Jabeur, Rafael
Nadal and Casper Ruud, and this Australian Open marks the first Grand Slam
tournament in the Open era — which began in 1968 — with the top two women’s
seeds and top two men’s seeds all gone before the quarterfinals.
In other women’s action Sunday, No. 3 Jessica Pegula got to
the quarterfinals in Australia for the third year in a row by defeating 2021
French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova 7-5, 6-2. Pegula now plays 2012-13
Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka, who returned to the final eight at
Melbourne Park for the first time since 2016 by grabbing the last three games
of a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 victory over 87th-ranked Zhu Lin that ended at nearly 2:20
a.m. on Monday.
Both the 22nd-seeded Rybakina, a 23-year-old who represents
Kazakhstan, and the 17th-seeded Ostapenko, a 25-year-old from Latvia, made it
this far in Melbourne for the first time.
“There was moments in the match where I was getting
frustrated, because I normally can problem-solve, but today I feel like I
didn’t have much answers to what she was doing,” said Gauff, an 18-year-old
from Florida who was the runner-up to Swiatek at the French Open last June.
“There was balls I was hitting deep, and she was hitting
them on the line and hitting them back deep, over and over again,” said Gauff,
who wiped away tears during her news conference. “It’s just one of those days
that just didn’t go my way and went her way.”
One key: Ostapenko went 3-for-3 converting her break
chances, and Gauff was just 1-for-8 in such situations.
Rybakina, meanwhile, used her big serve to produce a
half-dozen aces, part of an overall 24-15 edge in total winners against
Swiatek.
In men’s results, 22-year-old American Sebastian Korda —
whose father, Petr, won the 1998 Australian Open — reached his first Grand Slam
quarterfinal by edging No. 10 Hubert Hurkacz 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7),
unseeded Jiri Lehecka upset No. 6 Felix Auger-Aliassime 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 7-6
(3), and No. 18 Karen Khachanov eased past No. 31 Yoshihito Nishioka 6-0, 6-0,
7-6 (4).
Korda will meet Khachanov now, while Lehecka takes on No. 3
Stefanos Tsitsipas, who outlasted No. 15 Jannik Sinner 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3
on Sunday night. Lehecka was 0-4 in Grand Slam matches until this tournament,
while Tsitsipas was the runner-up at the 2021 French Open and is a three-time
semifinalist at Melbourne Park.
Until Sunday, both Swiatek and Gauff looked fairly dominant
for a week, winning every set they contested. Swiatek dropped a total of just
15 games, Gauff just 19, through three matches.
“For sure, when you play against No. 1, I think you have
really nothing to lose. I knew that I had to be aggressive from the first ball
because she’s a great mover, and she defends really well,” Rybakina said. “So I
was trying to just attack her from the first ball, and it really worked well.”
Her ranking of No. 25 does not properly reflect her ability
or results because her championship at the All England Club in July did not
come with any ranking points. The WTA and ATP tours withheld all points at
Wimbledon in 2022 after the All England Club barred players from Russia and
Belarus from participating because of the invasion of Ukraine.
Rybakina — who was born in Moscow but has played for
Kazakhstan since 2018, when that country offered her funding to support her
tennis career — said her current standing “doesn’t bother me, because it’s been
already six months,” yet also acknowledged it does provide some motivation.
Despite her status as a major champion, Rybakina has been
out of the spotlight: Her first-round match at Melbourne Park was placed on
tiny Court 13 last Monday; her match against two-time Slam champ Garbiñe
Muguruza at least year’s U.S. Open was on Court 4.
But her game is worthy of much more attention, as she
displayed in knocking out Swiatek, one match after defeating 2022 Australian
Open runner-up Danielle Collins.
Swiatek was not at her best, and Rybakina had a lot to do
with that. In the opening game, Swiatek led 40-love but got broken. In the
next, Swiatek held two break points at 15-40 but failed to convert either. So
early on, while it ended up being 2-2, it very well could have been 4-0 in
Swiatek’s favor, and she termed that sequence “a little bit disturbing.”
Rybakina wound up serving out that set at love, capping it
with a 113 mph (183 kph) ace, and her dangerous backhand was quite a help, too:
She produced six winners off that wing in the first set, compared with zero for
Swiatek.
In the second set, Swiatek appeared to have gotten herself
back on track, going up 3-0. But that surge didn’t last long, and Rybakina took
six of the match’s last seven games. -AP