How a cleaner, risk-averse game led Iga Swiatek to glory in Beijing

An ominous atmosphere often accompanies the early stages of an Iga Swiatek match.

If you’re a tournament director, or a TV commentator, or a paying ticket-holder—anyone with an interest in seeing a competitive contest that lasts for more than an hour—you’re quietly rooting for Swiatek’s opponent not to fall behind too soon. You’re quietly rooting for Swiatek not to come out of the gate rifling winners and breaking serve right away. Because you have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen if she does. It’s going to be blowout city.

These fears were certainly justified on Sunday, when she played Liudmila Samsonova in the China Open final. In their last meeting, in February in Dubai, Swiatek had broken early, and then continued on to a blink-and-you-missed-it 6-1, 6-0 win.

Through the first five games in Beijing, there was reason for hope. Samsonova was the one rifling forehand winners in the early going. The Russian was coming off a win over Elena Rybakina, and, theoretically, she has the ground-stroke power necessary to make Swiatek uncomfortable. But in the sixth game, Samsonova double-faulted to go down 15-30, and then double-faulted again to hand over the break.

As Sam Gore said in the commentary booth, “Alarm bells just went off."

He was right to be alarmed. Swiatek would lose just two more games in a 6-2, 6-2 win that lasted 69 minutes. I guess the tournament officials should be grateful it crossed the one-hour mark.

Swiatek is building a reputation as an all-time great front-runner. It’s exceedingly rare for her to lose a match after winning the first set, and she hasn’t done it once at a Masters 1000 event in her career. Judging by Samsonova’s go-through-the-motions performance in the second set, she was well aware of this fact.

The win gave Swiatek her fifth title of the season, and she improved her overall record in finals to 16-4. This was her first Masters 1000 win of 2023, after final-round defeats in Dubai and Madrid. But if the result, and the length of the match, were familiar, the way Swiatek won was a bit different than what we’re used to. You can see it in two stats that will make you do a double-take: She made no unforced errors; even crazier, she hit just two winners.

Playing with less risk and cutting down on errors was a focus for Swiatek in Beijing, after she made 50 of them in her loss to Veronika Kudermetova in Tokyo last week.

“Honestly, I think I played less aggressively than in past tournaments,” Swiatek said after her semifinal win over Coco Gauff, in which she misfired just six times. “I feel like I’m playing more solid. ... I think I’m making less mistakes than I did before.”

On Sunday, she was content to counter-punch with heavy topspin, keep the ball deep and well within the lines, and let Samsonova self-destruct.

“I’m happy I kind of adjusted to what Liudmila was playing,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to really be consistent with what I wanted to do, no matter what she was doing.”

Samsonova acknowledged the difficulty of facing Swiatek when she’s in this mode.

“I think this is what she’s doing the best, because this is the stress that she made to other players, that she doesn’t make unforced errors,” Samsonova said. “Every time you need to do something more. It’s not real what you feel, but she makes you feel like this."

With the title, Swiatek drew to within 650 points of Aryna Sabalenka in the year-end No. 1 race. Swiatek, who is entered in just one more event, the WTA Finals in Cancun, says she’s playing with more freedom since dropping to No. 2. She better be careful: If she keeps playing this freely, and this well, she may be No. 1 again before she knows it.