We mark eras of tennis by their stars. This has placed women’s tennis in a predicament over the last two years, because the sport has never seen a star with the gravity of Serena Williams either on the court or off it, and it almost certainly never will. These post-Serena years have so far featured players that are in turn exciting, talented, inconsistent, interested in getting in front of cameras, and impatient with the sorts of reporters a certain grade of success attracts. (“Simple question, simple answers,” a bored Elena Rybakina told a press conference after a journalist asked her something generic about what it would take to win the tournament.) In other words: we’ve got tennis players on our hands, not yet sport-transcending superstars, and a public that has become accustomed to thinking about tennis on the terms of its recent timeless demigods hasn’t yet figured out what to do with them.
I’m thinking about all this while I watch Iga Swiatek win her twentieth game in a row here at Roland Garros, a tournament she’s already won three times. As in: she won the final game of her third-round match to beat Marie Bouzkova 6-4, 6-2, then beat Anastasia Potapova 6-0, 6-0 in the fourth round, and just now opened up her quarterfinal match against Marketa Vondrousova (who has herself won a slam before) with a 6-0 first set. She’s up 1-0 now in the second set. Twenty games in a row, across three matches. She has been casually feeding some of the world’s best tennis players into a woodchipper.
Quick: tell me your favorite Iga Swiatek quote. Do you have a shot of hers you like best? Was she funny in that commercial you’re remembering, or did she have an outfit that got your attention at an off-court event or brand launch? I watch a fair amount of Iga Swiatek and do not have answers to these questions. This is what I love about her—she defies the usual beats and expectations of superstardom, which very frequently in any sport end up being only tangential to what actually happens in the actual competition. Iga is pure competitive drive, stripped of its branding and veneer. She is not here to pitch herself to you, and she does not care if you watch. She’s here to beat your ass and get ready for the next one. “Everywhere we go, we are there to win tournaments,” said her coach Tomasz Wiktorowski during the episode of Netflix’s Break Point that focused on Swiatek. “We are not tourists.”
No, they are not. Instead she’s steeled herself into becoming the rightful heir to Nadal’s throne here in Paris, the player who starts beating players before they step on the court with her and who glides across the red clay like she’s a part of it. She’s strong and solid off both wings, she’s willing to come to net and hit volleys—and none of this, impressive as it is, is remotely the point. Swiatek has found her own tier of tennis by way of a lethal combination of point construction, decision-making, and resolve. In the current game, she is the player who is not scared of the big moments. She’s the one who refuses to overhit, or bail out of long rallies, or take shortcuts. True to the match philosophy of her idol Nadal, she does not take points off. Her focus gives her matches an air of stifling quiet—the cues like fist pumps or slumped shoulders or smiles that fans look for as ways to get engaged with a player’s emotions are so rarely there. She gives away nothing. So when her opponent gives away anything at all, the match ends quickly. “Iga’s Bakery,” her fans call it when she records a 6-0 set, or a “bagel.” It’s clunky and quaint and cringey and it’s the best anyone has, because Iga doesn’t give her supporters much to go on either.
I will admit to something that veers toward the market side about all this: Iga makes me miss Ash Barty, who retired at age twenty-five at the top of the game, as well as a healthy and in-rhythm Naomi Osaka. Osaka in particular looked poised to take the mantle from Serena Williams as the game’s true superstar in a traditional sense, in everything from a highlight-heavy power game to her willingness to speak out on social issues to her fashion collaborations with Nike. During this long break of hers for health and for motherhood, I very much wanted her back. Which made this year’s French Open draw all the more tantalizing: unseeded Naomi Osaka slotted into Iga’s section, a blockbuster in the second round.
And god, did it deliver. A riveting first set that ended in a tiebreak, a second set that felt for the first time in years like we were getting the Naomi Osaka, rust-free and locked in, and then a third set in which Osaka stormed out to a 5-2 lead and had the tennis world ready to celebrate. She was swinging out, showing that easy power that won her four slams of her own. Here, finally, was a star—and, as important, the suggestion that stardom matters, in tennis’ upper atmosphere.
And then Iga happened.
No flinch, no quit, hardly a highlight, and then nothing but one tight fist pump and a glance up at her coach on her way to shaking Osaka’s hand after reeling off the final five games to steal the match 7-5 in the third.
All-time greats in any sport need rivals who are good enough to draw out what makes them special. Osaka’s effervescence forced Swiatek to show a solidity that for now is unmatched on the WTA tour. Off the court after the match, Iga let it out a bit more with some tears; she’s human, after all, even if she doesn’t much care about the commercial possibilities that fact might afford. The pressure released, she’s been cruising here ever since.
I think that over the next few days, Iga Swiatek will win Roland Garros for the fourth time. That’s a boring prediction, because the game is taking shape around a player who knows how to shave off its peculiarities and impose her preferred order. Others are coming, we know that— Osaka has already put out a quote about wanting Iga on a hard court later this year, Coco Gauff continues to improve, and players like Sabalenka and Rybakina present enough firepower on a given day to make things interesting. But if tennis still searches for stars, it’s got its next all-timer. Welcome to the Swiatek Era. It’s hers until someone takes it from her, and she has a tight grip.
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