By Richard Pagliaro | Saturday, May 28, 2022
Iga Swiatek lost 11 points in a row before resetting for a 6-3, 7-5 triumph over Danka Kovinic to reach the Roland Garros fourth round with her 31st straight win.
Photo credit: Getty
The spring season has been a smooth ride for Iga Swiatek.
Cruising to a one-set, 4-1 lead today, Swiatek suffered her first turbulence of the tournament dropping 11 straight points and four games in a row to Danka Kovinic.
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Resetting, Swiatek restored order with a three-game spree to seal a 6-3, 7-5 win over Kovinic that sends the top seed into the fourth round with her 31st straight victory.
Playing as if powered by an internal GPS, the world No. 1 continues to master every turn of the course—even when she’s not playing her best.
Swiatek responded to that scratchy patch of play cleaning up her act on dirt. Swiatek raised her 2022 record to 38-3, including a perfect 12-0 mark on dirt.
"For sure, the matches that I played here I feel like I was dominating, and today maybe at some point I wasn't during the match," Swiatek told the media in Paris. "So it wasn't surprising, it wasn't like weird, but for sure it took me longer time to kind of come back. That's why I think I lost these two service games.
"But overall, you know, I had many tight matches in Stuttgart. I'm thinking about Rome. Yeah, against Bianca [Andreescu]. Yeah, I was missing that. It's not that I forgot how to play these kinds of sets. So it's okay."
The 95th-ranked Kovinic did a lot right pressing the Rome champion with that three game spurt.
Kovinic, one of the few women who can match Swiatek’s heavy forehand spin, took her cracks from that wing, ran with vigor and competed hard for every point. The five games she won in the second set is the most games Swiatek has surrendered in a set since former US Open champion Bianca Andreescu pushed the Pole to a tiebreak opening set in the Rome quarterfinals earlier this month.
It certainly wasn’t the cleanest performance from Swiatek, who matched Kovinic’s 13 winners and committed 23 unforced errors.
Still, the fact Swiatek scored a straight-sets win despite not playing her best is another encouraging sign for the woman who has now won 48 of her last 49 sets. Swiatek owns the longest WTA winning streak since Serena Williams amassed 34 victories in a row in 2013.
Pressing the issue early, Swiatek won a 14-minute game to break for a 2-0 lead.
The 2021 Charleston runner-up Kovinic cranked an ace out wide to get on the board for 1-3 after 23 minutes of play.
Kovinic, who was three for three on break points, rallied from love-40 down to break for 3-4. Swiatek broke right back then whipped a forehand winner down the line snatching the 42-minute opening set.
Though Swiatek was only five for 10 on break points she seemed to be in complete command up a set and 4-1 when she lost the plot.
Zapping a forehand to back the world No. 1 up, Kovinic carved out a clean forehand drop shot winner breaking back at love for 4-all.
Kovinic continued to hammer away as Swiatek was spinning her wheels. The Pole pasted a backhand into the middle of the net as Kovinic capped her second straight love game for 5-4.
The world No. 95 won 11 consecutive points holding Swiatek scoreless for nearly 10 minutes.
Trying to stall her slide, the 2020 champion put on a long-sleeved shirt during the ensuring changeover. Swiatek held at 15 to level after 10 games.
Kovinic was up 30-love in the 11th game, but Swiatek was undeterred squeezing out successive wild forehand errors from her opponent to run off four consecutive points and break for 6-5.
The world No. 1 closed in 90 minutes to improve to 17-2 in Paris.
Swiatek will play Qinwen Zheng for a quarterfinal spot. Zheng, who toppled Simona Halep last round, led Frenchwoman Alize Cornet 6-0, 3-0 when Cornet, who was playing her 61st consecutive Grand Slam, retired with a leg injury.
"I'm not really familiar [with Zheng], honestly," Swiatek said. "Because I didn't watch a lot of tennis during past couple of months, but I have heard some other players talking about her. I'm sure that she's in the right place for her to be, because she's playing really well.
"Even when she lost some matches, people were really telling that she has a talent. But I didn't really watch a lot, so I'm not like tactically ready. For now I'm going to prepare, for sure."