Swiatek, Iga (2001- )

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      Swiatek Overcomes Muchova to Win Another French Open

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      Swiatek was drawn into a tight match with Karolina Muchova, and emerged with her third singles championship at Roland Garros in four years.Iga Swiatek is once more the queen of clay.Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, beat Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic to claim the French Open women’s singles championship on Saturday.Muchova, whose smooth and athletic game has been one of the sport’s best kept secrets for years, struggled with errors early but found her form and gave Swiatek the final of her life, forcing her to use every bit of the clinical, relentless approach that had made her the world’s top player — and then some — for more than a year.Swiatek outlasted Muchova, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 in a breathtaking, up-and-down battle that met the moment of one of the grandest stages in the sport. When Muchova’s second serve tumbled into the net on Swiatek’s first match point, Swiatek dropped her racket and brought her hands to her eyes, as Muchova came around the net for a well-earned congratulatory hug.Soon there was the increasingly familiar sight of Swiatek emerging in the stands for a celebratory huddle with her team and a few quiet words with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, who started working with her when she was a shaky teenager and helped mold her into a steely champion.“A big challenge,” Swiatek said of her triumph in the understatement of the day. “Really proud of myself that I did it.”Swiatek has been virtually unbeatable at Roland Garros since 2020. With Saturday’s win, she captured her third French Open singles title in four years. Since 2019, her record in the tournament heading into the final was 28-2, which may not rival the 112-3 record of Rafael Nadal, but give her time. Swiatek just turned 22 last week and has given few hints that she will be slowing down.Other than the occasional battle with her psyche, she seems to be getting better each year, especially at the French Open, a tournament she loves more than any other.For Muchova, the final capped a remarkable comeback from a year ago, when she sprained an ankle in a third-round singles match at Roland Garros and had to withdraw. The injury was the latest in a series of ailments that had long kept her from realizing the potential that so many of the game’s coaches, players and experts have seen in her for years.That loss sent her spiraling out of the top 200, forcing her to play a series of smaller tournaments to regain her standing. She entered this tournament ranked 43rd in the world, though few in tennis believed there were 42 women better than Muchova.Muchova plays a backhand against Swiatek.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesBut playing in a Grand Slam final for the first time is a challenge for any player, especially against the best in the world. Swiatek had cruised through her first five matches of the tournament. She won four of her first six sets without conceding a game. Then she lost just seven games across her next two matches.Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil made Swiatek uncomfortable for a bit in the semifinal, pushing her around the court and into a tiebreaker in the second set, but she arrived in the final with every reason to believe she would be lifting the trophy at day’s end.That faith grew stronger in the first minutes of the match, as the fluidity and mix of power and finesse that Muchova plays with on her best days were nowhere to be found. She sprayed balls wide and long, banged easy shots into the middle of the net, and gave Swiatek too many free points.There is no clock that regulates the length of a tennis match, but much of the sport is about controlling time, that is, finding a way to make an opponent feel rushed, like she has no chance to get to the ball, while figuring out how to give yourself all the time in the world. For more than a year that has been Swiatek’s signature, and it’s exactly what she did to Muchova on Saturday.There was a time two years ago when she was among the most creative players in the world. Her game featured squatting backhands and a repertoire of forehands with six different kinds of spin. There was an artistry to it all, but she didn’t win nearly as much.Now Swiatek doesn’t build winning points as much as she seizes them, going for winners with her big, rolling forehand at the first opportunity. The shorter the point, the less she has to think.She never eases her way into a match. She seeks to dominate from the start. When a point ends she hustles to start the next like she’s rushing to catch a train, plowing through sets and matches as though she’s got tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.For Muchova to have a chance, she was going to need to control the clock by extending points and find enough time to get comfortable on the biggest stage of her career.Swiatek had her first break of Muchova’s serve and the lead after just seven minutes. She led 6-2, 3-0 after an hour, while Muchova was still trying to find her footing.“The balls are coming fast,” Muchova said of the experience of facing Swiatek. “If you have a chance you have to take it because there may not be another.”And then she did. Shot by shot, point-by-point, game-by-game, she did. The strokes grew crisp and precise, the points stretched out, she slid into her shots so gracefully at moments it looked like she was dancing. Her volleys stung as the packed crowd of more than 15,000 fans chanted her name, urging her on.Swiatek wobbled, and as the match moved to the two-hour mark it was all even at a set apiece. Two minutes later, Muchova broke Swiatek’s serve for a third straight time and had her first lead of the day.Muchova and Swiatek had not played a competitive match since 2019, before either of them had established themselves at the top of the game. But they have practiced many times since then, and Swiatek has raved about Muchova’s talents.“Great touch,” Swiatek said of her competitor. “She can also speed up the game. She plays with that kind of, I don’t know, freedom in her movements. And she has a great technique.”All of it was there Saturday on one of the sport’s biggest stages, in one of the great Grand Slam finals in recent memory. Swiatek, who had sprinted to a seemingly insurmountable lead, wobbled as Muchova found her form, then battled from a service break down twice in the deciding set and found the answers and shots she needed.Swiatek had never lost a Grand Slam final and won all of those matches in straight sets. One of the few lingering questions was how she would respond if pushed into the crucible of a third set with everything on the line.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersAt first, it didn’t look good. She double-faulted to give Muchova yet another break of serve to start the deciding set and looked finished as Muchova surged to a 2-0 lead.Mary Carillo, the longtime tennis commentator, likes to divide players into two groups — those who have fangs and those who do not, those who don’t just win from the front but relish the chance to brawl and fight to the final ball and those who pack it in.Muchova had shown her fangs in the semifinal and in mounting her comeback on Saturday. Now it was Swiatek’s turn. She won 12 of the next 14 points to take back the lead only to watch Muchova bite once more, turning the third set into a roller coaster.She charged forward behind deep balls that had Swiatek on the run and finished points with touch or a blast or a line-pasting swipe, holding her own serve and breaking Swiatek’s for a 4-3 advantage.“After so many ups and downs I stopped thinking about the score,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to use my intuition.”That worked. Muchova’s lead lasted seven minutes, until an ill-timed drop shot settled to the bottom of the net and Swiatek was even once more and hearing the deafening chants of her name to the beat of a bass drum.“Iga is No. 1 in the world and I was so close,” Muchova said.With Muchova serving to stay in the match, Swiatek took dead aim on her returns at Muchova’s feet and nailed her targets, putting Muchova on her heels and in a quick hole. Double match point arrived as Muchova pulled a forehand wide. With a double-fault from Muchova, Swiatek had her crown, the queen of clay for another year.“Sorry for being so difficult,” she told her team during the awards ceremony.Four Grand Slam finals. Four championship trophies. Tops in the world. Swiatek doesn’t seem that difficult at all. More

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      Karolina Muchova to Face Iga Swiatek in the Women’s French Open Final

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      The tennis world has been waiting for Karolina Muchova to be healthy. Now she gets a shot at Iga Swiatek with a Grand Slam title on the line.There is a woman in professional tennis who has long sparked a wistfulness among her fellow players, current and past.They rave about her buttery smooth strokes, her deceptive power, that sublime balance, the sculpted physique and the seemingly effortless movement that make it so easy to imagine her running the offense on her nation’s basketball team, or playing center midfield on its soccer team.She is like that great indie singer whose occasional sets after midnight at the venue in the cool part of town have been caught for years by those in the know.If Karolina Muchova can ever stay healthy, they say, watch out.Noted.Muchova, a 26-year-old from the Czech Republic, will take on Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1, in a tantalizing French Open final Saturday after upsetting Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus on Thursday in the match of the tournament, 7-6(5), 6-7(5), 7-5.Every bit of Muchova’s repertoire was there on a steamy afternoon at Roland Garros. Lunging returns that floated down just inside the baseline. Banging forehands followed by dying drop shots. The ability to filet the hardest of Sabalenka’s forehands, which come off her racket as hard as any shot in women’s tennis, with cutting volleys that showed off the unteachable touch of a billiards shark.She needed it all — and some guts, too.“It’s kind of a little bit tricky to build a point against her,” Aryna Sabalenka said about Muchova.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersDown a match point while serving at 2-5 in the deciding set, Muchova saved her tournament with a crisp forehand down the line and won 20 of the final 24 points to reach her first career Grand Slam final, as Sabalenka’s old errors re-emerged down the stretch.“A little bit out of radar, but she always plays great tennis,” said Sabalenka, who said she lost her rhythm after match point escaped her. “It’s kind of a little bit tricky to build a point against her.”A major final is where so many have thought Muchova should have been for so long. A late-ish bloomer by the standards of the Czech Republic, which seems to churn out a new collection of teenage phenoms every year despite its population of just 10.5 million, Muchova began battling injuries in her late teens, when a growth spurt pushed her height to 5-foot-11 but also spurred back and knee troubles.She overcame those to make the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2019 and the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2021, stunning the world No. 1, and local favorite, Ashleigh Barty — an admittedly massive Muchova fan, by the way. But a series of nagging injuries, including a sprained ankle just as she was catching fire in the third round of last year’s French Open, sent Muchova spiraling to 235th in the world rankings, far from her peak of 19th in 2021.“Many lows, I would say, from one injury to another,” she said after her win Thursday. “Some doctors told me, you know, maybe you’ll not do sport anymore.”She tried to stay positive, though, grinding through one rehabilitation after another even as she struggled through small tournaments in places like Concord, Mass.; Shrewsbury, England; and Angers, France.Things happen quickly in tennis. She entered the French Open ranked 43rd, the kind of dreaded unseeded opponent no one wants to draw. She beat the eighth-seeded Maria Sakkari of Greece in the first round and dropped just one set in her first five matches. Just like that she was playing the tightest of third sets in front of 15,000 people in a Grand Slam semifinal. She could hear the trumpets and the throngs chanting her name as she tried to stay calm.“Here and there I had to let it out and scream a little bit,” she said, adding: “It was crazy out there.”It may very well get crazy once more on Saturday against Swiatek, who won this tournament in 2020 and 2022 and has won 13 consecutive matches at Roland Garros.Iga Swiatek hasn’t dropped a set at this French Open.Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSwiatek, who turned 22 last week, has enjoyed a career that has been the polar opposite of Muchova’s. She won her first Grand Slam title when she was 19 years old, and she became the world No. 1 at 20 in April 2022, after Barty suddenly retired at age 25.And while Swiatek initially played the kind of varied, all-court style that has garnered Muchova the lusty praise from tennis aesthetes, she largely abandoned it early last year in favor of a simpler, more aggressive approach built around taking every opportunity to blast her forehand and pound opponents off the court.It works. Swiatek can be downright lethal, finishing so many sets with scores of 6-0 (a “bagel” in tennis parlance) or 6-1 (a “breadstick”) that Twitter often lights up with chatter about “Iga’s Bakery” when she is on the court. She does not like that all that much, saying it is disrespectful to her opponents.Swiatek was less than clinical Thursday against Beatriz Haddad Maia, a tough and determined lefty from Brazil who, especially in the second set, moved Swiatek back and forth across the baseline and took Swiatek out of her rhythm. Uncharacteristically, Swiatek had more unforced errors than winners — 26 to 25.Playing in front of a small but throaty cohort of chanting Brazilians, Haddad Maia, the 14th seed, got Swiatek on the ropes. She was up a break of serve early in the second set and came within a point in the tiebreaker of forcing a third.Then Swiatek once more became the Swiatek that the world has gotten used to, especially on the red clay of Roland Garros. She curled a magical backhand on the tightest of angles to stay in the tiebreaker and finished off the match with a big forehand far out of Haddad Maia’s reach.“Pretty excited for Saturday,” Swiatek said moments later.Swiatek said earlier this week that as a Grand Slam moves into the later rounds, she often grows calmer.Jean-Francois Badias/Associated PressIf contrasts in styles are the not-so-secret sauce of great tennis matchups, then the final between Muchova and Swiatek holds the potential to be special. Swiatek will look to dig in and bang away. Muchova will look to use every weapon she has, keeping Swiatek guessing about what will come off her racket next — slices, killer topspin, floating moonballs that drop inches from the baseline.For a while last year, the conventional wisdom was that the only player who could beat Swiatek was Swiatek herself. She has spoken of struggling with her nerves and having to force herself to play to win rather than not to lose.Earlier in the week, after her quarterfinal win over the 19-year-old American Coco Gauff, Swiatek said she often grows calmer as a Grand Slam tournament moves into the later rounds. The early tightness lifts, and she can take a moment to enjoy what she has accomplished.A Grand Slam final, though, is another matter, and so is Muchova. The two have played just once, four years ago, before either one was the person or the player she is today. For what it’s worth, Muchova won that match in three sets, on clay, in front of a home crowd in Prague when Swiatek was ranked 95th in the world.The two have practiced together many times since then, said Swiatek, who, like Barty, counts herself among the Muchova faithful. She often finds herself watching Muchova’s matches.“She can do anything,” Swiatek said.Their one match may be a sample size too small for drawing any conclusions, but this stat may be more telling: Muchova has played five matches against players ranked in the top three, and she has won every time.“It just shows me that I can play against them,” she said Thursday. “I can compete.”Indeed she can. Her competitors have known that for a while now. More

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      Women’s Tennis Suddenly Has a Big(ish) Three

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      Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka have been winning just about everything important lately, emerging as a potential triumvirate unseen in the women’s game for about a decade.Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka have won a combined five Grand Slam singles titles. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have won 64.Swiatek, Rybakina and Sabalenka have been at the top of the sport for roughly a year. Some combination of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic has been there the last 20.Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland; Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who was born and raised in Russia but represents Kazakhstan; and Sabalenka, the 2023 Australian Open champion from Belarus, are still largely known only to tennis geeks. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are among the most recognizable athletes on earth.So it is with the utmost hesitance, caution and respect for what has come before that anyone should invoke the term “Big Three” when talking about Swiatek, 21, Rybakina, 23, and Sabalenka, 25.And yet something has been happening with this group lately in the rivalry-starved women’s game — something that could all come together in a glorious rumble during the next two weeks at the French Open. The first of the three to play at Roland Garros, Sabalenka, started her tournament with a win over Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine in a match tinged with wartime bitterness. Swiatek and Rybakina’s first-round matches are scheduled for Tuesday, with Swiatek taking on 70th-ranked Cristina Bucsa and Rybakina facing Linda Fruhvirtova, an 18-year-old ranked 59th.Ever since Ashleigh Barty of Australia retired while atop the rankings in March 2022 at age 25, Swiatek, Rybakina and Sabalenka have been hogging nearly all of the most prestigious trophies. They have often beaten one another on the way to the winner’s circle, giving hope to the tennis executives — if not the rest of the field — that the women’s game just might be on the cusp of the kind of rivalries it has been missing for roughly a decade, perhaps even as far back as when Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters were battling for supremacy.“It is what you want, the best players playing each other, over and over,” Steve Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, said during a recent interview.The budding rivalry even has a geopolitical back story to add some fuel and antagonism. Swiatek has been among the most outspoken critics of Russia’s invasion, helping to raise millions of dollars to support relief efforts in Ukraine. She wears a pin with Ukraine’s flag on it when she plays. Rybakina and Sabalenka hail from the two countries perpetrating the war, as Kostyuk reminded everyone Sunday.The Russian invasion of Ukraine has continued to cast a pall over the sport, especially whenever players from the Eastern European countries most affected by the conflict compete. Kostyuk refused to shake Sabalenka’s hand after their match on Sunday.Swiatek has never gone as far as Kostyuk and the other players from Ukraine have, but whatever relationship Swiatek has with her two biggest rivals, it is a chilly one. Swiatek said she, Rybakina and Sabalenka respect one another but do not have any relationship at all off the court. Also, she said, she tries not to think about politics when she plays.“When I think about the player, like, personally, it doesn’t help,” she said. “We don’t really have time in a match to overanalyze all the other stuff.”There certainly has not been a shortage of matches to analyze, though.In the first round, Sabalenka, a Belarusian, faced Marta Kostyuk, a Ukrainian who opted not to shake her hand after the match. Swiatek has been one of the most outspoken players against Russia’s invasion, which Belarus aided by hosting Russian troops. Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesSwiatek has lost to Rybakina three times this year already — at the Australian Open, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and then this month at the Italian Open in Rome, where she retired after injuring her leg early in the third set. Rybakina went on to win the tournament.Rybakina has provided a blueprint for toppling Swiatek, a three-time Grand Slam tournament winner. Few could do that in 2022, when Swiatek reeled off 37 consecutive wins at one point. But Rybakina is among the most powerful players in the game, and she uses that ability to put Swiatek on her heels.“Against Iga, it’s always tough battles,” Rybakina said earlier this year. “Everybody wants to beat her.”Swiatek beat Sabalenka in the final at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, in April (with a car on the line). Sabalenka returned the favor in May in the final at the Madrid Open.Sabalenka beat Rybakina to win the Australian Open in January. In March, Rybakina beat Sabalenka to win the title at Indian Wells, regarded in the sport as an unofficial fifth Grand Slam tournament.“Women’s tennis needs this kind of consistency to see world No. 1 and world No. 2 facing in the finals,” Sabalenka said after her win in Madrid. “It’s more intense.”Elena Rybakina won the Italian Open title after defeating Swiatek in the quarterfinals. Rybakina has three wins over Swiatek this year.Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesShe has also made it clear that overtaking Swiatek for No. 1 has been her primary motivation during the past year and that having a specific target has helped her figure out what she needs to improve upon to get there.It’s not unlike the dynamic that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic experienced at the heights of their success. They knew they were better than just about everyone else, knew the weapons that their stiffest rivals brought to the fore and knew their top priority had to be finding a way to answer them.Swiatek said it’s more fun this way, and not just for the spectators. So many matches against the same tough outs and so many familiar tactics to combat turn the sport into a search for solutions to very specific problems.“Pretty exciting, because I never had that yet in my career,” she said. “Extra motivation, for sure.”Not a true Big Three yet, but not that far off, and far closer than women’s tennis has been to one in a while. More

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      Elena Rybakina Defeats Iga Swiatek in Australian Open

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      Iga Swiatek could not find an answer to the power game of Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who is seeded No. 22 in Melbourne.MELBOURNE, Australia — After starting this Australian Open in the hinterlands of Court 13, Elena Rybakina made it to center stage on Sunday for her fourth-round match with No. 1 Iga Swiatek.Rybakina ended up stealing the scene in Rod Laver Arena: pounding big serves and flat groundstrokes and taking away time and Swiatek’s shot at the title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory.“It does not matter so much what court you start the tournament on as it does what court you finish the tournament on,” Rybakina said slowly and calmly a couple of hours later.Rybakina, who is 6 feet and has what tennis people call “easy power,” proved last July what she can do when she gets on a roll, rumbling past a series of Grand Slam champions and better-ranked, better-known players to win women’s singles at Wimbledon.A second major title is within reach if she maintains the form she showed against Danielle Collins in the third round and against Swiatek on Sunday. Lean with long limbs, Rybakina (pronounced ree-BOK-eena) can generate astonishing pace even in relatively slow conditions, and though she seems to take little delight in doing so with her still-water approach to competition, she made it clear in an interview that there was plenty of fire behind her poker-face facade.“What you see is calm, but for sure inside I’m nervous like everybody, and I’m full of emotions,” she said. “I’ve been that way since I was a junior. Sometimes it’s good also to show the emotions, that you are actually there and you are fighting. But this is something where I am different from other players. Most players are trying to learn how to be calm. I already know, and sometimes I’m trying to show more.”There were hints of it Sunday, including the amused smile that flickered across her face as she saw the excitement of the young Australian girl who met her and Swiatek at the net before the match to take part in the coin toss.But for the most part, Rybakina was all business, opening up big breaches in Swiatek’s normally formidable defenses with her big-bang patterns and her ability to take full cuts at the ball inside the court and straight off the bounce.Swiatek has faltered in her two most recent significant tournaments: the semifinals of the WTA Finals and the fourth-round match on Sunday in Melbourne.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockShe successfully attacked Swiatek’s forehand: hitting behind her on the run and ripping returns deep and at her body to capitalize on the extreme grip change Swiatek has to make after her serve.“For sure, if I feel physically strong and I’m healthy and I’m playing my best, it’s tough to compete against me, I understand that,” Rybakina said. “But also I’m trying to find my consistency throughout the year because it’s not easy with my big shots to avoid mistakes. But of course I’m trying to do less and less every match because I need to be focused, and it gets more difficult the better players you play.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Swiatek, the thoughtful Polish star, is the clear and deserving No. 1. She won the French Open and U.S. Open last year and six other tournaments, winning 37 consecutive singles matches from February to July.But she has faltered in the two most recent significant tournaments: cracking on big points and losing in the semifinals of the WTA Finals to Aryna Sabalenka in November and now losing in the fourth round in Melbourne.She looked edgy: blowing a 40-0 lead in the opening game to lose her serve and blowing a 3-0 lead in the second set to lose the match, striking groundstrokes into the net at critical phases. She has seemed overwrought during the Australian summer: sobbing in her chair after losing to Jessica Pegula of the United States in the United Cup team event this month.“For sure, the past two weeks have been pretty hard for me,” she said. “So I felt today that I didn’t have that much to, like, take from myself to fight even more.”Her conclusion: “I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to try to chill out a little bit more.”If you went by the seedings, Sunday’s result was an upset. Rybakina is seeded 22nd, but that is misleading. She got no ranking points for winning Wimbledon because the tours stripped the tournament of points in retaliation for its decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players after the invasion of Ukraine.Rybakina, born and raised in Russia before switching allegiance to Kazakhstan in 2018, was not affected by the ban, but without the 2,000 points normally allotted to the singles champion, she did not get a rankings boost for her victory.With those points, she would be comfortably in the top 10 and would also have qualified for last year’s eight-player WTA Finals, where another mother lode of points was available.Though she and her team appealed to the WTA to give her a wild card for the event based on her Wimbledon victory, the WTA did not grant the request.“I think she deserved it,” Stefano Vukov, her coach, said on Sunday. “And people also don’t realize that players get big bonuses from their sponsors for finishing top five or top 10 that can add up to millions of dollars, so not getting the points from Wimbledon definitely cost her.”Representing Kazakhstan makes it more challenging to market her globally than if she represented, say, a Grand Slam nation. For Vukov, that is a part of the reason she has received more Off Broadway court assignments than a typical first-time Wimbledon champion.“Where you come from has a big impact on the respect you might get on tour,” he said. “Not to be prejudiced or negative about it, but it is what it is. The biggest markets we have are the U.S. and China. You might get more recognition if you are from the U.S. than maybe from Kazakhstan, which is totally understandable. In Kazakhstan, she gets huge recognition, but worldwide, internationally, it does affect things.”Vukov is an extrovert compared with his player. “That’s why it works very well between me and Elena,” he said. “Whatever she’s thinking, I’m probably expressing it. I hope.”He said he had considered complaining to tournament directors about court assignments but refrained because ultimately “people are going to promote who they want to promote.”“Look, I think we don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” he said. “I think people know her quality and how good she is and how much she can win. She just needs to keep on going down this road, and that’s it and win as much as possible. I see her as a bit the Djokovic of the women: You got to win maybe a couple more Grand Slams to get recognized.”In Melbourne, she will now need to get past another major champion, Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia. Ostapenko, the surprise 2017 French Open champion, outplayed and outslugged the American 18-year-old Coco Gauff on Sunday, prevailing, 7-5, 6-3, as she pounced on Gauff’s second serves, hit 30 winners and repeatedly forced the speedy Gauff into errors with her pace.“I still feel like I’ve improved a lot,” said Gauff, who teared up in her postmatch news conference. “I still feel like when you play a player like her and she plays really well, it’s like there’s nothing you can do.”Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, right, met with Coco Gauff of the United States at the net after their fourth-round match.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe other quarterfinal in the top half of the draw will match the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka against Pegula, the last American woman in singles. But Ostapenko’s quarterfinal against Rybakina on Tuesday is guaranteed to be the higher-velocity affair, and Rybakina will have more support than usual. For the first time at a major tournament, both her parents are in Melbourne along with her older sister Anna.Her parents, based in Moscow, have often been separated from the 23-year-old Rybakina during her pro career. Her two main training bases at this stage are in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Dubai, where she spent the preseason with her expanded team that now includes a full-time fitness trainer. But Rybakina, whose parents have also joined her in Kazakhstan, now has the means to reunite her family more often.“It was not easy in the last years, not only me being new on the tour but also how the world changed with all the pandemic and everything,” she said. “It was really a crazy time for everybody, not only the athletes. But, for sure, it means a lot.”They will all be in her player box on Tuesday: in Rod Laver Arena. More

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      War and Motherhood Sidelined Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina. She’s Ready to Return.

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      Rather than struggling to compete on the WTA Tour most of 2022, the tennis star focused on her new daughter and raising money to help her fellow Ukrainians.Elina Svitolina, the most successful Ukrainian women’s tennis player in history, has not played tennis in 10 months.She is a new mother — her daughter, Skaï, was born in October — and Svitolina is, like many prominent Ukrainians, a crusader, focused on raising money and awareness for her embattled country.Based in Switzerland with her husband, the French tennis star Gaël Monfils, Svitolina has sensed that the wider world is losing interest in the conflict with Russia.“Here in Europe, a couple of times people came up to me and asked if there is still war going on in Ukraine,” she said in a video interview. “This was very, very sad for me to hear. I have close friends and family back in Ukraine, and I know what they are going through.”When hope and energy run low, she thinks of her 85-year-old grandmother Tamara, still in Odesa, the vibrant, strategically vital port on the Black Sea where Svitolina was born and lived in her early years.“The winter is very tough right now for Ukrainians,” Svitolina said. “Obviously, it’s very cold, and they are often without electricity and running water. My grandmother lives on the 13th floor, and she needs to walk all the way up to her apartment because she cannot use the elevator. She could get stuck, or there are no lights at all. I have many friends in different cities, and they tell me the same stories. No lights. No water. They are just sitting at home. Most of the time, the phones die after one day so you cannot connect with them.”With her grandmother and her compatriots in mind, Svitolina is using her clout to help keep the power on. An ambassador for United24, a Ukrainian fund-raising platform, she organized a gala event in Monaco in December that raised 170,000 euros, or about $181,000. She said that 57,000 euros that were raised have been earmarked for the purchase of generators for Ukrainian hospitals.“Without electricity in the hospitals, they cannot perform some essential surgeries,” she said. “Our goal for the generators is 10 million euros.” They have raised 2.9 million so far, she added. “But we need more help.”Svitolina, ranked as high as No. 3 in 2017, was a semifinalist at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2019 and has long been one of the sport’s best movers and counterpunchers. But she has not played since losing in her opening round of the Miami Open in March. Newly pregnant and reeling emotionally after the Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she said she realized she could not continue to compete. She spent days drained or in tears and has worked with a psychologist and leaned on Monfils and her family but also benefited, she said, from time on her own, time in her own head.“I didn’t touch a racket for seven months,” she said. “I wanted to switch off from tennis. I had maybe too much because of what happened in the end of February and all the nerves and all the pressure. The tournaments I played were probably too much for me mentally, so I was really happy to switch off completely. Right now, for me the goal is to come back, but I’m sure I won’t regret that I took this time off.”Svitolina and Monfils, a luminous, acrobatic talent and intermittent top 10 men’s player, were married in 2021 and are one of the game’s power couples. But Monfils missed much of the last season with foot and heel injuries.Both are targeting comebacks in 2023. Monfils, 36, has often talked about his desire to play until age 40, but, as a new father, he has shortened that timeline. He now plans to continue at least until the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where the tennis event will be held on the red clay at Roland Garros, the site of the French Open. Svitolina would like nothing better than to win a medal for Ukraine in those Games.But Svitolina, who only recently resumed training, is not planning on a quick return even if the back problems that troubled her before her hiatus are resolved for now.“I will try to be ready for the summer, but I try not to rush things,” she said. “Because I know I need to be very strong to be back on tour, because right now tennis is very physical. All your muscle groups need to be ready and after not playing for over seven months and not doing so much after pregnancy, of course, your body is different now. And I have to really break everything down into small pieces to put together the full strength of my body, which I will need if I want to get back to the top.”At 28, she certainly has time in a sport where more players are competing deep into their thirties and where more women also have made successful returns from childbirth, including Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka, Serena Williams and Tatjana Maria, who reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2022 after her second extended break from the game because of pregnancy.“I’m sure that they worked extremely hard to get back where they were and some of them are even better,” Svitolina said. “So that certainly gives me hope and motivation I can do the same.”Svitolina’s only contact with tennis during her break came in July, when she served as the chair umpire in an exhibition to raise funds for Ukrainian children that was organized by Iga Swiatek, the young and increasingly outspoken world No. 1 from Poland.Svitolina has appreciated Swiatek’s public support but remains disgruntled about the pro tours’ decision to allow Russian and Belarusian players to continue competing, albeit as neutrals without national identification. While Wimbledon barred the Russians and Belarusians because of the war it was an outlier and was stripped of ranking points in retaliation by both the men’s and women’s tours, who also fined the tournament and Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association.“I was shocked to see this,” she said. “The U.K., they always supported Ukrainians; they helped so many Ukrainian refugees to find new homes. I think the tours should have respected Wimbledon’s decision rather than punish them, but it’s really hard to see what will change the tours’ position, even if I don’t agree or understand it.”Through her personal foundation, she said she had been involved in helping more than 100 young Ukrainian players and their families find new training bases even if some have had to return to Ukraine. But she has no illusions about the challenge ahead and is all too aware of the destruction. She lived in her early teens in Kharkiv, recently reoccupied by Ukrainian forces but one of the cities that has suffered the most damage during the war. The arena in which she and her Ukrainian teammates once played Fed Cup matches has been destroyed by bombing.“Our athletes and our sports have been thrown back at least four or five years, because all the stadiums, all the facilities in Ukraine were destroyed,” she said. “After the war is finished, I really want to help to build a tennis center that kids can use to train. And it’s not just facilities that were destroyed. I think our kids have mentally been destroyed as well. Some of them lose their parents. Some of them are homeless. They see these explosions, these shootings. A whole generation I think mentally is really facing a big struggle.”It has been a year to rue but, for Svitolina, a year also to savor.“The most horrible year with the war and also the most happy I would say with welcoming our first baby in October,” she said. “So, it’s a mixture of everything, but we are here right now, and for me it’s just important to do everything possible every single day that I can. And for now, the goal is for the Ukrainian people to at least have a little light in their lives.” More

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      With the Australian Open Set to Begin, All Eyes Are on Rafael Nadal

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      The defending champion, Nadal has lost six of his last seven tour singles matches and is struggling with his timing, confidence and composure. But don’t count him out.MELBOURNE, Australia — The first collective gasp of this year’s Australian Open came Thursday afternoon, four days before the tournament officially begins.The hubbub came at the start of the men’s singles draw when Jack Draper’s name appeared in the second slot in the 128-man field. That meant Draper’s first-round opponent was guaranteed to be Rafael Nadal, the reigning Australian Open champion and the No. 1 seed in the absence of the injured Carlos Alcaraz.The buzz in the room was a sign of the left-handed Draper’s gathering strength — a 21-year-old Briton, he is in form and up to No. 40 in the world — but also a reflection of Nadal’s disarray.One of the greatest champions in any sport, Nadal has lost six of his last seven tour singles matches, struggling with his timing, confidence and even his composure as he has been defeated by, in order, Frances Tiafoe, in the fourth round of the U.S. Open; Tommy Paul, in the first round of the Paris Masters; Taylor Fritz and Felix Auger-Aliassime, in round-robin matches at the ATP Finals; and Cameron Norrie and Alex de Minaur, in the recently completed United Cup team event.None of those six men has reached a Grand Slam singles final and neither has Hubert Hurkacz, who dealt Nadal his latest defeat — even if it was only in a practice match — in Rod Laver Arena on Thursday evening in front of a few thousand spectators (and a chair umpire).Hurkacz, a flashy shotmaker with an unflashy personality, is no pushover. He is seeded No. 10 in Melbourne and will forever be the last man to face — and defeat — Nadal’s friendly rival Roger Federer in singles.Hurkacz defeated Federer in straight sets in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2021, and he looked considerably looser and more relaxed on Thursday evening than Nadal, who kept casting concerned glances at his main coach, Carlos Moyá, after missing groundstrokes and first serves.“Rafa is certainly vulnerable,” said Todd Woodbridge, the Australian former star who is now an analyst for Australian television. “He had that faraway look on a changeover against Tiafoe at the U.S. Open and it looked like he had it again in the match against de Minaur last week.”But as Woodbridge and everyone else in tennis have learned repeatedly over the past 19 years, you cannot count out a player of Nadal’s talent and inner drive. He has repeatedly risen from the depths, most recently at the 2022 French Open, which he entered injured and slumping but then managed to win his 14th men’s singles title at Roland Garros.Another title run here in Melbourne looks far less likely, however. The opening hurdle is high with the 6-foot-4 Draper, who advanced to a semifinals match on Friday in the lead-in event in Adelaide.The son of Roger Draper, a former chief executive of Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association, Jack Draper was once considered uncertain to break through to the highest level because of his movement. But he has improved his quickness and court coverage significantly in recent seasons.Jack Draper of Britain will face Nadal in his opening match.Mark Brake/Getty Images“It will be amazing to play on a big court against him; he is a great champion,” Draper said in Adelaide about his first chance to play Nadal. “Whatever happens it will be a special occasion for me. I’m still very young in my career, so it’s great to have these sort of experiences and exposure to playing Rafa on a big arena.”Get past Draper, and Nadal could face the rising American Brandon Nakashima in the second round, Tiafoe in the fourth round and the former No. 1 Daniil Medvedev in the quarterfinals in what would be a rematch of their topsy-turvy, five-set Australian Open final last year.Nadal’s experience, grit and ability to problem solve in best-of-five-set matches should not be dismissed, and he has been focused on shortening points and coming to the net in his pretournament sessions this week. He pushed forward often against Hurkacz on Thursday.“I need to win matches, for sure, but the preparation is going quite well, practicing a lot and I’m in good shape,” Nadal said. “Then you need to demonstrate that in the matches in the official tournaments, but I am confident that if I’m able to have the last week of positive practices, why not?”Draper is not the only British player with a high-profile match in Melbourne. Andy Murray, Nadal’s contemporary and a former No. 1, will face the former Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini in the opening round. Emma Raducanu, the big-surprise U.S. Open women’s champion in 2021, could face seventh-seeded Coco Gauff in the second round if both win their openers (and if Raducanu’s injured ankle continues to improve and allows her to take part in the tournament).Gauff, 18, struggled with her forehand and confidence at the end of the 2022 season, but had a productive off-season and on Sunday won the singles title in Auckland, New Zealand. The event was played indoors and outdoors because of frequent rain and lacked many of the other leading Australian Open contenders.The favorite in the women’s draw remains No. 1 Iga Swiatek despite her lopsided and emotional defeat to Jessica Pegula of the United States in the United Cup. But Swiatek, who faces the German all-court player Jule Niemeier in the opening round, is in a thorny section of the draw. Her eighth includes the Grand Slam singles champions Bianca Andreescu and Elena Rybakina as well as Danielle Collins, who lost in the final last year in Melbourne to Ashleigh Barty, who retired last March.There will be newcomers as well, including the 15-year-old qualifier Brenda Fruhvirtova, the youngest woman in the tournament and part of the Czech Republic’s big wave of young talent that includes her sister Linda Fruhvirtova, 17, who is also making her Australian Open singles debut.Jessica Pegula, at No. 3, is the highest-seeded player from the United States among men and women.Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse via Getty ImagesThursday’s draw delivered another rarity: a first-round match between two former Australian Open singles champions: Victoria Azarenka, the Belarusian veteran who won in 2012 and 2013, and Sofia Kenin, the American who won in 2020 but has since dropped outside the top 100. That matchup was all the more extraordinary considering that Azarenka and Kenin are the only Australian Open women’s singles champions in the draw. The seven-time Australian Open champion Serena Williams is now retired (or at least evolved). The two-time champion Naomi Osaka and the 2016 champion Angelique Kerber are pregnant, and so is Barty, although that happened after her surprise retirement at age 25.Much can change in a hurry in tennis, as Nadal knows well, and this year’s tournament is already a sea change from last year’s because Novak Djokovic is in the draw after being deported by the Australian government on the eve of the 2022 event because he was unvaccinated for the coronavirus.Now, after a change in government policy and after winning the warm-up event in Adelaide, Djokovic, still unvaccinated, can chase his 10th Australian Open singles title. He will face the unseeded Spaniard Roberto Carballés Baena in the opening round on the opposite side of the draw from his longtime rival Nadal.Based on current form, Djokovic winning his 22nd major singles title sounds a lot more plausible than Nadal winning his 23rd. More

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      WTA Chief Talks Money, China and Why Tennis Needs More Female Coaches

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      Even without China’s “zero-Covid” policy, Steve Simon said that unresolved concerns about Peng Shuai would keep women’s tennis away from Shenzhen and a lucrative 10-year-deal to stage the Finals.FORT WORTH — The WTA Finals, the elite season-ending women’s tennis tournament, was supposed to take place in Shenzhen, China, for 10 years and fill the WTA’s coffers.It has not worked out as planned.China’s “zero-Covid” policy continues to keep nearly all international sports events out of the country. Even if China did reopen, women’s tennis has suspended all tournaments in the country, once one of its key markets, because of unresolved concerns about the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who last year accused a former top Chinese government official of sexual assault.“We’ve made a strong stand, and we stand behind that stance, and we’re not going to compromise our principles,” Steve Simon, the WTA’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview. “Clearly when we did it, we understood eyes wide open what it could mean.”Last year’s WTA Finals were moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. This year’s event, which was scheduled to finish on Monday night, was staged on short notice at the 14,000-seat Dickies Arena in Fort Worth with attendance that built from woefully low early in the tournament to modest, but enthusiastic, crowds of close to 6,000 in some of the later sessions.Some coaches and players, including No. 1 Iga Swiatek, said they understood the challenges but were disappointed with the turnout. Swiatek, who was defeated by the seventh-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals on Sunday, also cited the big gap in prize money between the WTA Finals, which offers $5 million, and the equivalent men’s tournament, the ATP Finals, which starts Sunday in Turin, Italy, and will offer an event record $14.75 million. The 2019 WTA Finals, the only time the tournament was held so far in Shenzhen, offered $14 million in prize money, which was $5 million more than the 2019 men’s event in London.“It’s just pretty sad the WTA kind of got hit by Covid and by not having the place to play before and organize everything properly,” Swiatek said. “But on the other hand, you have an example in the ATP that they were able to do everything and even increase the prize money. So, hopefully for next time, we’re going to be kind of more prepared.”But the ATP did not bank as heavily on China, and at this stage it seems unlikely the WTA will soon return to the country where it staged nine tournaments in 2019. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, doubled down on the “zero Covid” policy last month, and Simon reaffirmed in Fort Worth that the tour’s suspension of tournaments in China will not be lifted until there is a credible and transparent inquiry into Peng’s allegations, which were made in November 2021 on her Chinese social media account, as well as a chance for tour officials to communicate with her independently.“We’re still in the same place,” Simon said. “If they come forward with something else we should look at, of course we are open to it. But we haven’t seen it so far. I’m hopeful we do find a resolution. That’s the goal, to find the right resolution. What’s the truth? Then we can move forward.”Peng, a 2014 U.S. Open singles semifinalist who made public appearances during the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, has since recanted the assault allegations, citing a misunderstanding. Now 36, she announced her retirement earlier this year. But the WTA remains unconvinced that she is able to act and speak freely and it has still not been able to make direct contact with her.“We know she’s safe, and she’s in Beijing and doing OK,” Simon said. “We haven’t spoken directly with her.”If the stalemate continues, Simon said the tour would seek a longer-term solution for the Finals, which have traditionally been a key revenue stream. Instead, the WTA was obliged to provide the $5 million in prize money in Guadalajara and again in Fort Worth: quite a downturn from Shenzhen providing it all in 2019.“It’s just pretty sad the WTA kind of got hit by Covid and by not having the place to play before and organize everything properly,” No. 1 Iga Swiatek said.Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty ImagesSimon said there was more interest from prospective cities in staging the event on a multiyear basis because of the economics. He said securing sites for a single year has been a challenge despite going to market in March this year. Though Fort Worth and its modern arena were welcome, announcing it so late in the season made it difficult to promote (as did football season in Texas).“We’re not going to continue to do these one-year decisions,” Simon said. “It’s not sustainable. If it looks like we can’t go back to China or aren’t ready to go back, then I do think we will carve out a multiyear situation, because we need to for the business.”The WTA signed a new title sponsor, Hologic, in 2022 that provided crucial funding, some of it up front, but the tour continues to seek other investors and is now in exclusive and advanced negotiations with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Luxembourg that could take a stake in the tour and help address the prize-money gap that Swiatek complained about.“It’s just a very complex business decision and business move we need to work through,” said Simon, emphasizing that the deal, if concluded, would not further complicate the governance of a sport already awash in governing bodies.Though the four Grand Slam tournaments and several other top-tier combined events, like the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., offer equal prize money to men and women, the gap has widened between many stand-alone men’s and women’s events.“When are people going to start stepping up and actually following through?” Simon said. “They are saying one thing about support of women athletes and sports and leagues and the need to invest, but when it comes to actually stepping up and treating it the same way and investing that isn’t happening.”Though a merger with the ATP, an idea floated most recently during tennis’ hiatus in 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, has not materialized, there is increased cooperation, symbolized by the United Cup, the new men’s and women’s team event in Australia in January that was formerly the men’s only ATP Cup and will lead in to the Australian Open.But major equity issues remain, including the persistent dearth of women in coaching. The WTA said that there are only six working full time with the top 100 WTA singles players and top 50 doubles players. The issue is complex. Women have traditionally been more resistant to the year-round travel, and male coaches often still serve as hitting partners for female pros, thus fulfilling two roles and saving money. But Simon sees bias as well, and the WTA launched an initiative last week to increase those paltry numbers, offering an online certification course and opportunities to shadow coaches and players during tournaments.“I think you’re dealing again with one of those stigmas,” Simon said. “Hopefully we can recruit and get more women after they finish playing or they’ve gone through the coaching ranks that they will continue to rise and become a part of the tour.”Simon said the WTA will also soon appoint a new director of safeguarding: a topic at the forefront of women’s sports with last month’s investigative report on the National Women’s Soccer League revealing widespread sexual misconduct and coercion by coaches.In tennis, Pierre Bouteyre, a former coach of the leading French tennis player Fiona Ferro, was charged earlier this year in France with rape and sexual assault against Ferro when she was a teenager.“It’s a critical issue to the tour, and it goes way beyond sport,” Simon said of protecting players from abuse.The WTA has existing programs focused on player education and background checks and credentialing for coaches. But Simon and other tennis leaders believe the sport should do much more collectively. He said the International Tennis Integrity Agency, the independent body that investigates doping and corruption in the game, could add safeguarding to its portfolio.“It’s exploratory for now but serious,” said Simon, who said involving the agency would allow coordinated oversight across the “entire sport” from the junior level to the pro tour.“That’s not the case now, everyone is doing their own thing to the best they can,” Simon said. “One of the education pieces is we need to help ourselves. If you see it, you need to report it, so we can react to it versus just dealing with rumors, because it’s such a sensitive topic, and it’s hard to get people to come forward.” More

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      Iga Swiatek, U.S. Open Winner, Is Ready for Global Stardom

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      At 21 years old and already a superstar in her home country of Poland, Swiatek is a bona fide No. 1 with a package of tennis skills both innate and acquired.Upon arrival in New York for this year’s U.S. Open, I was delighted to return to a city that is on its way back, as ever, after hard times. But I was surprised to keep hearing questions about women’s tennis’s lack of a dominant player.The farewell tour of Serena Williams, the greatest women’s champion of this era, explained the interest in who might fill the void, but if you’ve been following the women’s game this year, there has been plenty of dominance on display.Doha. Indian Wells. Miami. Stuttgart. Rome. Paris.Iga Swiatek has won titles in all those cities this year, and it should be no surprise to anyone, not even an emotional Swiatek, that she added New York to the long list on Saturday afternoon.Her 6-2, 7-6 (5) victory over Ons Jabeur in Saturday’s U.S. Open women’s final was a reminder of what makes Swiatek such a force:Phenomenal, elastic, sliding defense into the corners, often out of the near-splits popularized by Kim Clijsters and Novak Djokovic.Sprinter’s speed moving forward. (She chased down Jabeur’s signature drop shots on Saturday like a cheetah chasing down a wounded impala.)Heavyweight punching power and penetration off the ground, above all the topspin forehand like Swiatek’s role model Rafael Nadal.Big-match mental strength, which has allowed her to find and maintain her focus under duress with the help of her longtime performance psychologist and friend, Daria Abramowicz. She is now 10-1 in tour-level singles finals.That package of skills, both innate and acquired, has created a genuine champion, and what should be genuinely scary to the opposition is that she can still improve her serve, transition game and volleys by big margins.Her 6-2, 7-6 (5) victory over Ons Jabeur in Saturday’s U.S. Open women’s final was a reminder of what makes Swiatek such a force.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAt just 21 years old, Swiatek is a bona fide No. 1 with a huge lead in the rankings over Jabeur, the engaging and gifted Tunisian who will be back at No. 2 on Monday.Swiatek will have 10,365 points to Jabeur’s 5,090: the kind of clear separation that great players like Williams or Steffi Graf have created in the past. And the last woman to win seven or more singles titles in a season was Williams in 2014.“That was my goal, to get to 10,000 points,” said Tomasz Wiktorowski, Swiatek’s coach who joined her team in December and has been one of the architects of her great season.After winning the French Open by surprise in 2020 and then solidifying her spot in the top 10, Swiatek has taken flight in earnest in 2022, reeling off 37 straight victories earlier this season, often by lopsided Grafian margins, and winning a second French Open and — after a short market correction in July and August — her first U.S. Open.With three majors, she is now closing in on Naomi Osaka, the Japanese star and former No. 1 who has won two U.S. Opens and two Australian Opens, as the most accomplished major champion of their generation.But Swiatek, who is three years younger than the 24-year-old Osaka, already has one significant performance edge. While Osaka has never won a tour-level title on clay or grass, Swiatek is a multisurface threat. Of her seven titles this season, three have come on her long-favored red clay, but four have come on hardcourts like those used at the U.S. Open.“I wasn’t sure if I was on the level yet to win actually a Grand Slam, especially on U.S. Open where the surface is so fast,” she said of hardcourts. “It’s something that I wasn’t expecting, for sure. It’s also like a confirmation for me that sky is the limit.”The sky should include Wimbledon. Though Swiatek has yet to get past the fourth round on the grass at the All England Club, she did win the junior title there in 2018 and has the tool set and improvisational athleticism to win the main event there down the road.In her only match with Osaka this season (and in the past three years), Swiatek rumbled past her, 6-4, 6-0, on Osaka’s best surface in the Miami Open final.Osaka has played little since then and struggled with injuries and her timing when she did play. She is ranked No. 44, and yet she remains by far the most globally prominent young women’s tennis star: the highest-earning female athlete, capable of launching her own management company with her agent Stuart Duguid and signing up other players such as Nick Kyrgios.Her high profile is based on achievement to be certain but also on geography, representing a major market like Japan while based in another major market, the United States. She also has been bold and outspoken on social-justice issues and her own mental-health challenges, positioning herself as one of the voices of an engaged generation.It will be intriguing to see if Swiatek, already a superstar in her home nation of Poland, can break out globally, as well. She is smart and empathetic, likes to read and can crack a joke when she is not cracking a forehand. Handed the $2.6 million champion’s check on Saturday, she said, “I’m really glad it’s not in cash.”Though she said in an interview in May in Paris that she was still trying to sort through the best way to use her new platform, she has demonstrated a new willingness and confidence to speak out since then. She organized an exhibition to raise relief funds for young Ukrainians in July in Poland and is the only leading player not from Ukraine to still wear a blue and yellow ribbon on court to mark her support for Ukraine in the war with Russia.“Society, we don’t have a long memory, but, I mean, lives are at stake so I think we should remind people,” she told me at Wimbledon, which barred players from Russia and its ally Belarus.It will be intriguing to see if Swiatek, already a superstar in her home nation of Poland, can break out globally, as well.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut it is her tennis that has spoken the most loudly and eloquently in 2022, and while she swept through the draw to win the French Open, she had to play through stormy weather in New York — coming back to defeat Jule Niemeier and Aryna Sabalenka in three sets — before securing the trophy under clear skies.“For sure, Roland Garros I always feel like I have more control, and I feel like Philippe Chatrier is kind of my place,” she said of the center court in Paris. “Here on Ashe, I still need to figure out the atmosphere. I wasn’t sure before the match if this is actually my place.”There is no doubt that she found her stride in 2022 in a void: rising to the top after the shock exit of Ashleigh Barty, the Australian star who was a firmly entrenched No. 1 when she announced that she was retiring from the game in March at age 25.It was another big blow to the women’s game, which has seen too many stars leave too soon, and Swiatek has expressed regret that she will no longer have the chance to test her power tennis against Barty’s more varied skills. Jabeur has Bartyesque versatility but lacks the Australian’s formidable serve and cannot generate quite the same forceful topspin with her forehand or wicked side-spin when she hits her backhand with one hand.Even during Williams’s quarter century at or near the top, the women’s game often lacked a transcendent rivalry. There has been nothing quite like Graf vs. Monica Seles; certainly nothing like Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova, who was in sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday to present the women’s trophy to Swiatek.Swiatek vs. Osaka, or Swiatek vs. Jabeur or Swiatek vs. Coco Gauff all sound like fine ideas for the future. Despite rumors to the contrary, women’s tennis does indeed have a dominant player, one with a long-term plan to stay there. Now it needs other women to rise up consistently to challenge her. More