In the biggest upset of the 2020 French Open so far, Polish youngster Iga Swiatek came away with a straight-set shock over the top seeded Simona Halep.
Swiatek came through 6-1, 6-2 to register the biggest match of her career and made it to the quarterfinal for the first time at a Grand Slam. The match lasted less than 70 minutes.
The 19-year-old from Poland was off to a flier, breaking in the very second game of the first set and then holding on to the next two serves to take a 4-1 lead. Halep had a game point on her serve in the sixth game but was broken for the second time before Swiatek held on with relative ease to clinch the set.
The second set began in similar circumstances with Swiatek breaking Halep in the very first game before pushing the Romanian to four break-points and six deuces in her next service game as well.
While Halep was fortunate to get away by scraping through that game, she got no respite in her next service game. Swiatek kept attacking Halep’s serve, forcing her into mistakes and earned herself a further six break-points in that fifth game of the set, before the Pole finally achieved her objective, a second break of serve.
While Halep kept getting broken, her issue was she barely managed to scratch the surface when it came to her opponent’s serve.
Shockingly, Halep, who was broken four times in the match, got no break-points of her own in the match. She won a mere 24% of the receiving points, and even on her own second serve, clinched just six points.
Swiatek, who went on to serve out the match to 15, had a whopping 81% win percentage on her first serve, to go with her 30 winners. Halep hit just 12.
And it wasn’t just a shock for the rest of the tennis world, Swiatek admitted at the end of the match:
“I am also surprised I could do this.”
Swiatek will play the winner of the fourth round match between Kiki Bertens and Martina Trevisan.
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