By Richard Pagliaro | Monday, September 7, 2026
Photo credit: Antoine Couvercelle/ROLEX
NEW YORK—Lego lover Iga Swiatek spends her spare time building block-by-block landmarks.
Six-time Grand Slam champion Swiatek even constructed her own Lego Magic Kingdom.
Today, Zheng Qinwen took a wrecking ball to Swiatek’s US Open dreams.
Facing a daunting Love-5 deficit today, Zheng roared through seven straight games, shocking Swiatek 7-5, 6-3 to rally into her third US Open quarterfinal in the last four years.
It’s a deeply disappointing defeat for Swiatek, who had won 14 of her last 15 hard-court matches, including taking the Toronto title last month, and was a pre-tournament pick by many media and fans to return to the US Open final.
After walking off Arthur Ashe Stadium court, a disconsolate Swiatek shed tears as she walked through the hall to the locker room.
Though she looked frazzled at times, Swiatek said afterward she didn’t tighten up, Zheng lifted her level.
“Today, I wouldn’t say it had anything to do with mentality,” Swiatek said. “It was more that I started making mistakes, you know, from easy balls and Qinwen stopped doing mistakes. She played the balls better.”
After building that 5-0 lead, Swiatek lost the range on her topspin forehand, even running around that stroke to hit backhands, and found herself increasingly playing defense against a flurry of flat forehands from Zheng, who also ended the Pole’s Olympic dreams defeating her en route to the Olympic gold medal.
After a surprising collapse that saw her surrender 13 of the last 16 games, Swiatek summed up her spiral simply: She framed too many shots and couldn’t control the ball.
“I was just mishitting the balls, you know. So didn’t feel like I had space to feel it better,” Swiatek told the media afterward. “Well, I framed a lot. I didn’t hit the ball in the right place. It’s not so easy to adjust, like, the basic things in the game if they’re not working, you know. Just tried to focus on having, like, smooth rhythm and everything, but also, you know, I didn’t have good timing. I wasn’t hitting the ball right.
“It’s tough to get over that when it happens. And maybe I could have played more safe or something, but I also didn’t feel like I had space with Qinwen to do that. If I would be more solid than her, I would win this game, but I wasn’t solid and I was missing too much.”
The 2022 US Open champion Swiatek showed the skills to shift gears in her game when she needed to winning the Canadian Open then reaching the Cincinnati semifinals.
Today, when Zheng elevated her play, the Pole panicked a bit. Swiatek sometimes flat-lined shots into net, surrendered serve three times in a row after building the 5-0 lead, and was muttering misgivings to her box as the match wore on showing the Chinese physical signs of stress.
Despite her victory in the 2022 US Open final over Ons Jabeur and the fact she carried an imposing 7-1 career record over Zheng into today’s match, Swiatek said this isn’t the first time she’s felt unsettled on Ashe Stadium.
“Honestly, every US Open except 2022 has been like that. So, like, we face many losses, so obviously it’s not the best thing to say, but, like, in tennis, you’re more used to losing than winning,” Swiatek said. “So I don’t feel like I need to, like, bounce back from anything. Just need to focus on the work before next tournaments, and there are going to be other chances to play good tennis, and I will focus on growing and developing my game. That’s it.”
The eighth-seeded Swiatek joins seventh-seeded Karolina Muchova, ninth-seeded Elina Svitolina and 10th-seeded Amanda Anisimova as the fourth Top 10 seed to fail to reach the Flushing Meadows quarterfinals.
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