(Paris) Triple winner of Roland-Garros, the world No.1 Iga Swiatek presents herself, on the momentum of a Madrid-Rome double, as the arch-favorite of the 2024 edition which opens on Sunday, strong in her weapon fatal shot borrowed from his idol Rafael Nadal, his leaping forehand topspin.
On Madrid clay, as on Roman clay, the 22-year-old Pole defeated world No.2 Aryna Sabalenka in the final each time. More than three hours of arm wrestling and three match points discarded in the Spanish capital at the beginning of May, barely an hour and a half on the Italian ocher last Sunday: two scenarios, the same outcome.
So much so that with an almost perfect spring tour –– she only lost one match out of fifteen played, in the semi-final in Stuttgart (Germany), beaten by world No.4 Elena Rybakina in April -, Swiatek is necessarily a great favorite figure in his own succession.
“Obviously I am confident. I feel like I’m playing great tennis. But Grand Slam tournaments are another story. There is a different pressure on and off the court. There are seven hard matches to win,” she summarized this week.
“I love coming back to Paris,” added the four-time Grand Slam winner (Roland-Garros 2020, 2022 and 2023, United States Open 2022), but “I take nothing for granted, I will work hard as I I did it in Madrid and Rome, and we will see.”
Like Justine Hénin?
Until now, only Serena Williams has achieved a Madrid-Rome-Paris hat-trick, in 2013.
If she is crowned for the fourth time at Porte d’Auteuil on Saturday June 8, Swiatek will become, tied with Belgian Justine Hénin, the third most successful player at Roland-Garros in the Open era (since 1968).
Only four players would still be ahead of her in the number of titles on Parisian clay: Nadal obviously, with his dizzying fourteen triumphs, Chris Evert (7), Steffi Graf and Bjorn Börg (6).
All things considered, there is a bit of “Rafa” in Iga’s N.1 weapon, which gives its full expression on the ocher, this dizzying lift that she gives to her forehand, without equal on the women’s circuit.
“I will never be able to spin the ball at the speed he spins it,” but “it’s good to take his forehand as an example, to watch how he uses the topspin to make the difference,” he said. she admitted in Rome, when questioned about the elements of the Spaniard’s game that she would have tried to borrow from him.
“I think we have a lot of similarities on this level”, even if “her backhand is (played) quite flat”, added the queen of the WTA circuit.
More than 3000 revolutions per minute
According to statistics presented by the WTA, during the fortnight of 2020, that of her first coronation, Swiatek’s forehand ball was the one that rotated the most among the players, with an average of 3,200 revolutions per minute, barely below that of “Rafa” that year. One of her balls in the final against the American Sofia Kenin even reached 3453 revolutions per minute.
To what extent will Swiatek, who will celebrate her 23rd birthday on May 31 and currently has 28 victories for only two defeats, leave her mark on Roland-Garros?
Too early to say, but these bases also have something “nadalesque”. When he triumphed for the first time on Parisian clay in 2005, the Majorcan left-hander had just celebrated his 19th birthday. Swiatek was the same age when she won her first Grand Slam title in 2020, at the end of an exceptional autumn edition in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If she wins a fourth coronation in five years in a little over two weeks, she will only be one year behind the infernal passage times of the ogre of ocher.