Swiatek comes back from the brink to stop Osaka

A few thunderous groundstrokes into the pair’s third career meeting, we had an emphatic answer: like a champion. 

Unfortunately for Osaka, only one champion could advance. 

Swiatek saved a match point and pulled past Osaka in three gripping sets, 7-6(1), 1-6, 7-5, in two hours and 57 minutes. 

“For sure this match was really intense,” Swiatek said on court after locking up her 16th consecutive Roland-Garros victory.

“Much more intense for the second round than I ever expected.

"Naomi played amazing tennis, with a really loose hand – maybe she’s gonna be a clay-court specialist in a while.” 

One winner, two narratives 

Polled pre-match, you would have been hard-pressed to find a pundit who liked Osaka’s chances to defeat the reigning three-time champion on her best surface, and Osaka’s least successful. The Japanese megastar entered the contest with zero top-10 wins on clay, and a 26-20 overall record on the surface. In her first match in Paris she had fumbled through her opening round victory over Lucia Bronzetti, eking past the Italian in three seesaw sets. 

Swiatek, meanwhile, finishes the match with a sterling 79-10 record on clay.

Osaka, true to form, didn’t view the Swiatek challenge as too daunting. 

“I definitely do feel like it's a test to see where I'm at, but I wouldn't say I have low expectations of myself,” she said after her win over Bronzetti on Sunday. “I'm a person who thinks that I can win every match that I play. That's kind of gotten me this far.” 

Osaka’s affinity for the big stage – and the big challenge - was on full display on Wednesday as she demonstrated perfect body language from the very first thunder claps of the contest, and never wavered in her self-belief, even after failing to convert a set point in the tenth game and dropping a lopsided opening-set tiebreak in 69 minutes.  

It was that relentless positivity that sent Osaka on a second-set flier as she put the full-court press on Swiatek and breezed through the set to the tune of one game dropped in 32 minutes, 6-1. 

>> WOMEN'S SINGLES DRAW

That purple patch nearly took her across the finish line, as well. 

Osaka raced out in front in the deciding set, and had a point for what would have been a double-break 5-1 lead when Swiatek began to show her steel.

The tightrope-walking Pole held serve to stay in touch, and later saved a match point with a daring backhand return while Osaka was serving at 5-3. Two games later Osaka’s best efforts were denied again by Swiatek, who converted her second break point to break for 6-5, then held serve to emphatically close out her victory moments later. 

“For sure I felt for most of the match that I wasn’t really here and now,” Swiatek later said. “My mind was flying around sometimes, but when I was really under the biggest pressure I was able to actually focus more and play better, not thinking about what the score is and that I was really close to losing.

“I just kept going forward and I hope that my game is going to get better because of that.” 

Swiatek streaks live on 

With her triumph the Pole improved to 27-0 lifetime when winning the first set at Roland-Garros and 30-2 overall at the Parisian Slam. In addition to her 16-match winning streak at Roland-Garros she increased her current streak to 14 matches, and claimed victory from match point down for the second time this month – Swiatek defeated world No.2 Aryna Sabalenka in the Madrid final after saving three championship points in the third set. 

Osaka drops to 0-5 against the top-10 on clay for her career, but she can hold her head high after a stunning performance that may turn out to be a preview of things to come during this summer’s hard court season. After struggling to hit her peak level for much of the season, the 26-year-old former world No.1 has demonstrated that her comeback from maternity leave is well and truly picking up steam. 

Osaka drops to 2-4 against No.1-ranked players, her last such win coming against Ashleigh Barty at Beijing in 2019. 

“This level is good enough to win majors,” Tennis Channel’s Lindsay Davenport said while commentating on the match. And when the dust had settled, Davenport added: “Highest quality second-round match of a major I’ve ever seen.” 

It was a stunning, legacy-building victory for Swiatek, but it very well may have marked Osaka’s official return as a Grand Slam threat.