Iga Swiatek’s 37-match winning streak was broken on Saturday when France’s Alize Cornet defeated her in the third round at Wimbledon 2022. The 32-year-old won in straight sets 4-6, 2-6.
Swiatek was unbeaten since February and seemed unbeatable, compiling 37 consecutive match wins and six consecutive tournament titles. She was the top seed in the All England tournament.
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However, as she herself admitted, the Polish star looked confused on Saturday. It was not just the match’s winner that was unexpected. It was also just how one-sided this 1-hour, 33-minute encounter was.
“What can I say? I know I didn’t play good tennis. I was pretty confused about my tactics. As a solid player, she (Cornet) used that pretty well. It wasn’t good performance for me,” Swiatek said in the press conference.
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The 21-year-old added that her aggressive approach did not work out.
“Usually when I’m coming back, I have some kind of a plan and I know what to change. Here I didn’t know what to change. I was confused. Basically the thing that I changed this season is I started being more and more aggressive. It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive. But here I couldn’t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit. Then in the second set, I kind of made few attempts to speed up again, and it didn’t work out.”
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After trailing 0-3 in the first set, Swiatek bounced back and took an early lead in the second. However, then six successive games were lost.
“On grass court everything happens so quickly. I tried many things to feel better on court, on grass courts, but it didn’t really work out,” she said.
“That’s why I’m not even hard on myself because, it’s kind of logic that if I couldn’t find it even on practices, I’m not going to find it in a match.”
