NEW YORK: A final often finishes with contrasting images, ones that never quite fade. The winner, euphoric after the last point, lying on her back and looking up at the New York sky, like Iga Swiatek on Saturday. Ons Jabeur, fighting back her emotions as the Pole wrapped her in a hug. The Tunisian’s box, sporting her ‘Yalla Habibi’ tees, make a desperate attempt at control. The triumph and the tears of an evening in Flushing Meadows.
The winner takes it all, Abba might’ve sung of a love story gone wrong, but the words lend equally to sporting contests, where one and only one leaves with the silverware that counts. And Swiatek it was again, for the second time on a major stage in 2022.
Swiatek, who added the US Open crown to her two Roland Garros titles with a 6-2, 7-6 (5) scoreline, has made a habit of winning when it’s down to the last two standing.
The only final the 21-year-old has lost in her career is her first one, in Lugano, back in 2019, when she was 17 years of age. Since then, she has won ten title-round matches — 20 consecutive sets — and only two of those were at events below a WTA 1000 or Grand Slam level. In 16 of those 20 sets, she conceded no more than three games.
“The day before the final I don’t enjoy it at all,” said Swiatek of finals and pre -paring for them. “I’m more of a person who is going to have doubts. When I go on the court, I forget about that. I only focus on the things that are going to make me play better and win points. I feel like when I’m on the court I can just do my job, I can make these doubts go away.”
Swiatek was on fire in the first half of the year, winning 37 matches that resulted in six titles over four months. She claimed three consecutive WTA 1000s on hard courts in Doha, Indian Wells and Miami, which should’ve served as warning for what was to come.
Once that run was snapped at Wimbledon, she stuttered. This fortnight, she showed not only is she great when the going is good, but that she competes with the tenacity of a streetfighter when not at her best.
“At the beginning of the season I realized that maybe I can have some good results in WTA events,” she said of playing on hard courts. “I also made it to the semifinal of the Australian Open. But I wasn’t sure if I was on the level to actually win a Grand Slam, especially in the US Open, where the surface is so fast. It’s something that I wasn’t expecting. It’s also a confirmation for me that sky is the limit.”
Her losses in Cincinnati and Toronto — going out in the round-of-16 — gave her time to prepare for the US Open.
“At the beginning of this (American) swing, I had to really force myself to make some technical adjustments,” she said. “Then I finally accepted that I’m going to make those mistakes. It’s not going to be like on a slow surface where I can build a rally, then be really calm and just finish. It’s going to be more risk and less control, I accepted that.”
“I also didn’t need to think about this technical stuff at the end because I did it for already four weeks. So, it got a little bit more natural and I used more intuition,” she added. “That was the thing that actually let me be free.”
Unlike 12 months ago when Emma Raducanu’s run in New York, from qualifier to champion, gave the women’s game a fairytale spin, this year’s final between the No. 1 and No. 2 players in the WTA Race — Swiatek and Jabeur — showcased form. And steel.
