Swiatek, unstoppable: matches a streak of Serena Williams

Iga Swiatek is unstoppable. The world number one counts her matches by wins, no matter what kind of opponent. He has 27 consecutive after dispatching in the semifinals of Rome to Aryna Sabalenka (6-2, 6-1 in 79 minutes)who had been playing wonderfully, with whom equals a historic streak of Serena Williams, which finished at the 2015 Madrid Open and is the fifth best (see table).

This Sunday (1:00 p.m., Teledeporte) they will play their sixth final of the season, against the Tunisian Ons Jabeur or the Russian Daria Kasatkina, with the confidence that he has not lost any of the previous five. She is the first tennis player to reach four WTA 1,000s in the same course since Simona Halep in 2017.

Swiatek gave no respite to Sabalenka, 8th in the ranking, whom he had already beaten twice in 2022 (Doha and Stuttgart). She broke her first two serves and although she missed one along the way, she sentenced with another break for 5-2 in the first set. The second was a monologue by Rafa Nadal’s admirer. This year he has not lost any of the five semifinals he has played and is the leader in total wins with 34, 26 of them in two sets (in Rome he has not yielded any) and accumulates 13 wins by 6-0. Impressive. His record is 30-0 when he wins the first.

The service problem

In a women’s tour where serving is a serious problem, Swiatek is one of the few stable players in that regard. For Sabalenka, for example, is a real ordeal. A few weeks ago he asked the Australian Mark Philippoussis for advice, although he continues to choke on the subject. contradiction is that she is one of the best in aces (she has 61 on land), but she commits many double faults (two this Saturday for a total of 205, the worst mark of this campaign). So it is difficult to beat a player as focused as Swiatek, who seems to have no opponent. Even more so with the lumbar problems that the Belarusian accused.