For 10 minutes in the mid-afternoon, halfway through a first-round victory during which she seemed to be moving through a lighter air than her opponent, Jana Fett, Iga Swiatek did something interesting.
Swiatek had just taken the first set 6-0. At which point she fell apart. Very briefly. And not in a way that mattered, or amounted to much more than a ripple, a 21-year-old drifting off midway through a stroll against the world No 252.
But it was enough to add a note of interest to Swiatek’s march towards a 36th successive win, now the longest women’s singles winning run of this century. It is a run that poses its own questions about things like trajectory, end points, uplift. What exactly are we witnessing? How far can it go?
Advertisement
