SHOWDOWN: Madison Keys is Iga Swiatek’s next hurdle after the American player sent Elina Svitolina packing to be on a career-best 10-match win streak
AFP, MELBOURNE
A ruthless Iga Swiatek yesterday said that her confidence was soaring and she was starting to believe she can go all the way at the Australian Open after years of early exits.
The five-time Grand Slam champion swept past Emma Navarro 6-1, 6-2 into a semi-final against Madison Keys to match her best performance in Melbourne.
The second seed from Poland was phenomenal in her execution, equaling her 2022 effort when she fell to eventual runner-up Danielle Collins in the last four.
Poland’s Iga Swiatek returns to Emma Navarro of the US in their Australian Open women’s singles quarter-final in Melbourne yesterday.
Photo: AP
That has been as good at it has got at the year’s opening Grand Slam since her debut in 2019.
In contrast, the 23-year-old has won four times at Roland Garros and once at Flushing Meadows in New York.
“This is something that I always wanted to improve,” she said of her Australian struggles. “For sure this year I felt like I should just focus on work and kind of have the same mindset as in practices, just improving point by point. It has been working.”
Madison Keys of the US celebrates winning her Australian Open women’s singles quarter-final against Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina in Melbourne yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
“I mean, it’s not like I need to prove it to other people. It’s more that I need to kind of believe. I feel I believe more now,” she said. “Last two years my journey here finished at fourth and third round, so for sure I feel more confident now.”
Keys is her next hurdle after the American 19th seed sent Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina packing 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 to be on a career-best 10-match winning streak, but she will have her work cut out with Swiatek yet to drop a set and giving up only 14 games so far in her five matches.
“I think the biggest thing that makes her so difficult to beat is because since she moves so well, if you miss your spot just slightly, she has enough time to recover, and then the point goes back to neutral,” Keys said. “So I think it’s really hard to ever really get ahead in a point.”
Swiatek has gone about her business with an air of calmness, totally focused on the end goal.
One of the those goals is retaking the world No. 1 ranking she lost last year to Aryna Sabalenka when slapped with a one-month doping ban.
If Sabalenka falls in her semi-final against Paula Badosa today, the Pole would again rise to the top.
Should Swiatek and Sabalenka meet in the final, the winner would leave Australia with the No. 1 ranking.
Swiatek wasted no time showing who was boss against Navarro, breaking the American to love with back-to-back winners before a comfortable hold for 2-0.
She broke twice more as Navarro struggled to convert first-serve points.
The American showed more resistance in the second set, but ultimately was only able to watch as Swiatek held for 3-2 after benefiting from a dubious double bounce call, then broke and raced home.
Keys clinched a spot in her seventh Grand Slam semi, and her third on the Australian Open’s blue hard courts.
“I think I play a little bit smarter, for sure,” Keys said, looking back to her first Melbourne semi in 2015, where she lost to eventual champion Serena Williams. “Probably a little bit less fearless though, but to be here 10 years later in the semi-finals again, I’m really proud of myself.”
Svitolina was in control of the first set, converting her first break point to take a 5-3 lead and sealing it with an ace.
Keys upped her pace at the start of the second, securing a break for 4-2 with a baseline winner and serving out to level the match.
She kept up the pressure in the third set, tightening the noose with Svitolina having no answers.
