Iga Swiatek escapes Alexandra Eala in Madrid second round

Iga Swiatek avoided another stunning loss to Alexandra Eala at a WTA 1000 event with a three-set comeback in the second round of the Mutua Madrid Open on Thursday, with the No. 2 seed and defending champion rallying from a set and a break deficit to win 4-6, 6-4, 6-2.

The first hour of the match looked like a carbon-copy of Eala's 6-2, 7-5 upset of Swiatek in the quarterfinals of the Miami Open last month, in which the former junior US Open champion announced her arrival at tour level. Swiatek racked up 25 unforced errors in the first set, and lost serve four times en route to trailing Eala 6-4, 3-2. But the world No. 2, defending 4000 ranking points in the coming weeks after winning Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros last year, cleaned up her tennis and found her way through a pulsating comeback in two hours and 15 minutes.

"It wasn't easy to get into the rhythm and feel the right timing, so I'm happy that I was just patient," Swiatek confessed post-match after making 57 unforced errors. She finished with 40 winners, 29 of which came in sets two and three. At one stage early in the second set, Eala had won two-thirds of her points off of Swiatek's mistakes.

In her post-match press conference, which came after 30 minutes on the practice court, Swiatek admitted that despite being 13-2 in Madrid in her career entering the match, she struggled to adapt to the conditions.

"It's never so easy to adjust to the altitude here, and the first practices I played here was much colder," Swiatek said. "Yesterday it was hotter, but we only had like one hour to do stuff, so it wasn't exactly the same feelings as I had on the match.

"The balls were for sure flying a little bit out of control from my racquet, so I got the tension a little bit higher in the second set, and then it was better. But still, yeah, like when you're not starting well it sometimes takes a little bit more time to find your game, but then I did so I'm glad."

She also admitted that the surface aided her as she worked her way into the match.

"Yesterday [the media] asked me how different the game is going to be, and for sure, like, on clay I feel like I have a little bit more advantage sometimes in the situations, where Alexandra could, you know, take more advantage on faster hard courts," she said.

Swiatek escaped her earliest loss at any WTA 1000 event, on any surface, in nearly four years with the three-set win, her first in a deciding set since she topped Linda Noskova from a set behind in the third round of the Qatar Total Open in February. She last lost in the second round at the 2021 Cincinnati Open.

Swiatek will face Noskova again in her next match in Madrid, seeking to beat the Czech for a fourth straight time since losing to her in the third round of the 2024 Australian Open.