By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday May 3, 2024
The tenth meeting between Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka will be their fifth on clay, and second in as many years in the Madrid final.
Photo Source: Getty
The tenth meeting between Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek will be a rematch of last year’s Madrid final, and a matchup of the premier clay-courter in the women’s game and a steady – and lethal – force in the women’s game who hopes to knock her off her perch.
Saturday’s Madrid Open final also marks Sabalenka and Swiatek’s fifth career meeting on clay, and the 10th time that No.1 and No.2 seeds have met in the final of a WTA 1000 event since 2009. Swiatek and Sabalenka’s 2023 Madrid final, won by Sabalenka 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, marks the last time No.1 and No.2 seeds have clashed in a WTA 1000 final.
Scroll down for more on Saturday’s blockbuster women’s singles final (1830 local time) in Madrid…
Sabalenka’s a Madrid Queen
Aryna Sabalenka has been an absolute tour de force in Madrid, where she has now won 11 consecutive matches and is bidding to become just the second woman in history (along with Petra Kvitova) to win three titles.
Swiatek may hold sway on slower playing clay surfaces, but we saw last year that Sabalenka has what it takes to beat the best on the red clay inside the Caja Magica, and her previous success at the venue will give her immense confidence heading into Saturday’s showdown.
The World No.2 is 17-3 lifetime at Madrid. She’s also 6-0 against the Top-20 and 4-0 against the Top-10 in the Spanish capital.
Why does she excel in Madrid? Here’s how Sabalenka explained her success in the Spanish capital before the tournament: “There are a lot of [reasons] why I like it. The atmosphere in the stadium is amazing. The court is really great quality.
“The altitude is definitely helping me. The high bounce also helps me a lot here.”
Iga’s THE Clay Queen
Madrid may be Sabalenka’s happy, high-bouncing place, but when it comes to Swiatek, any venue that features crushed red brick underfoot will do. She’s now 70-10 lifetime on clay in her career and in Madrid this week she has been her usual ruthless self, dropping just 20 games to reach her 11th career WTA 1000 final.
And the milestones keep rolling in for the WTA’s new Queen of Clay. By reaching her 10th career clay-court final, 22-year-old Swiatek became the youngest player to achieve that feat since Martina Hingis in 2000. The three-time Roland-Garros champion is also 3-1 lifetime against Sabalenka, with her only blemish coming last year in Madrid.
We have an impending clash of two titans in Madrid – the greatest active clay-courter in the women’s game and the woman who has ruled the Magic Box with an iron fist.
This will be the ultimate challenge for Swiatek
Saturday’s final presents exactly the type of challenge that has proven difficult for Swiatek to overcome over the years: facing an aggressive, powerful force who has the capability to take the racquet out of her hands. If there is one knock on the Polish juggernaut, it is that she is susceptible to players who have the game to rush and overpower her.
It’s why the Pole has been so dead set on improving her first serve this season. She wants to be able to dictate more of the points against the top players and she sees the first-serve as the logical path to this next step in her evolution.
Swiatek has had time to think long and hard about the challenge of facing these types of players, and talked about the challenge on Thursday after she reached the final.
“I wouldn't say we're trying to figure out, because we kind of know what I should play, but sometimes it wasn't easy to implement it,” she said when asked about the prospects of facing either Elena Rybakina or Sabalenka in the final (the pair had not played their semifinal when Swiatek talked to reporters).
“So I still feel like I haven't played [a] match where I tactically played the best from the beginning till the end against these players – this is something that I want to kind of improve. It's not like we need to change a lot, but we need to stick to the plan and I need to implement it a little bit better, I think, sometimes.”
Altitude is Attitude
Madrid is tennis on high, played 2,133 feet above sea level, and this is why Aryna Sabalenka and other big hitters like Petra Kvitova and Serena Williams have had so much success there in the past. The ball flies, and bounces high. Big servers are rewarded with free points. Everything about the way the clay plays in Madrid helps Sabalenka be better than she would be in other locations like Rome and Roland-Garros, which are played at sea level.
Not that Sabalenka is bad at those venues, she’s just better in Madrid, and that’s why her best chance to impose her breathtaking power game on Swiatek will always be in the Caja Magica as opposed to somewhere else.
Streaks are on the line
Saturday’s final previews as two locomotives streaking towards each other, on a collision course. Sabalenka has not lost in Madrid since 2022 and is 17-1 there since the start of 2021. She struggled after winning this year’s Australian Open, enduring well-documented personal struggles, but it now feels like she is back and thriving on the big stage. Thursday’s takedown of Elena Rybakina in a high-octane three-setter will only add fuel to her fire.
But Swiatek is on a heater as well. And nobody is tougher in finals. The Pole responded well to her loss to Sabalenka at Madrid last year. Since then she has won her last 7 WTA finals, improving to 19-4 lifetime in title matches on tour.
Only three players have defeated Swiatek in a WTA final – Polana Hercog, Barbora Krejcikova and Sabalenka – and only Krejcikova (remarkably) has done it twice.
A lot will have to go right for Sabalenka to become the second on Saturday, but if there’s a place where it could happen, Madrid would be it.