Iga Swiatek reached the second round of the US Open in 58 minutes

On the first day of the US Open, a Grand Slam tournament with a tennis record total prize fund of $65 million, Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek entered the fight, who defends not only her last year’s title, but also the title of the first racket of the world in this competition. In the round of 16 match against Sweden’s Rebecca Peterson, she had no problems, advancing to the next round in less than one hour.

The two major Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) 1000 tournaments in August have somewhat changed the situation at the top of the WTA rankings. The second racket of the world, Arina Sobolenko, exactly repeated her last year’s results, reaching the third round in Montreal and the semi-finals in Cincinnati, but the leader of the world classification, Iga Sventek, significantly improved them. If a year ago she was eliminated in the 1/8 finals in both competitions, now she has played two semi-finals, as a result of which her lead over Sobolenko has increased and now stands at 1209 points. This allows the Polish tennis player to feel relatively comfortable in the fight for leadership, even though she won the US Open last year and is now forced to defend 2000 points. After all, Sobolenko, in turn, lost to her in New York in the semifinals a year ago, earning 780 points. Thus, if we do not take into account the results of the previous US Open, Sobolenko is only 11 points ahead of Swiatek, and in order to maintain leadership, the polka needs to go one lap further or, if it comes to that, win a face-to-face meeting in the final. As for Elena Rybakina from Kazakhstan and American Jessica Pegula, who occupy third and fourth places respectively, they are at a considerable distance and cannot interfere in the fight for first place in any scenario in New York.

Before the opening match of Sventek, in which her opponent was Rebecca Peterson, the balance of power looked extremely clear. There was a period when this Swede gave quite a lot of promise. For a while, she even trained under renowned compatriot Thomas Hogstedt, who led Maria Sharapova to her first victory at Roland Garros in 2012. However, some serious breakthrough in Peterson’s career did not happen. Her highest achievement so far is 43rd in the rankings. Statistics clearly spoke in favor of the first racket of the world. In the two previous face-to-face meetings, Swiatek gave her only six games, and out of 18 starting matches at the Grand Slam tournaments held since the beginning of her career, the polka lost only one, at Wimbledon, which was relatively problematic for herself, while Peterson at the last three US Open, on the contrary, it took off immediately.

Not surprisingly, the two games played on Monday afternoon in New York did not show even a hint of struggle.

More precisely, there was a tiny hint – at the very beginning of the second set, when Sventek, with her mistakes, gave up three points in a row on her serve. However, after that, a series of very clear draws followed in her performance, and Peterson failed to make a break. For 58 minutes of the game, she managed to take only one, the next game. As a result, having won ten times more points than her opponent – 20 against 2 – Sventek literally flew into the second round.

It is not so difficult to assess the immediate prospects of the polka. Apparently, at least until the fourth round, serious problems are not foreseen for her. In any case, her next opponent will be the former Russian, and now Australian Daria Saville (nee Gavrilova), who missed the first half of the season due to injury, now occupies only 322nd place in the world classification and got into the main draw thanks to protected rating. This experienced tennis player had even more potential than Peterson a few years ago, and on a good day for herself, she is able to present a sensation, but she is unlikely to cope with Schwiontek.

However, Arina Sobolenko does not expect any special difficulties during the first week either. In the first round, she will meet with the Belgian of Ukrainian origin Marina Zanevskaya, the 112th racket of the world, and then she will play with the Russian Anna Blinkova or the British Jody Burrage. Of these three tennis players, Blinkova, who is in the ranking at 38th position, looks the most dangerous for the Belarusian. True, in the third round of Wimbledon, she could not give Sobolenko much trouble, after which she lost four out of five matches on American hard.

Note that out of a tennis-record $65 million prize pool, the winners of this US Open in men’s and women’s singles will receive $3 million each, and the finalists will receive $1.5 million each.

Evgeny Fedyakov