Iga Swiatek Steamrolls Through the French Open, Besting Sofia Kenin in the Final

PARIS — The Polish national anthem reverberated through a mostly empty Philippe Chatrier Court to the delight of Iga Swiatek, who had barely broken a sweat in her 6-4, 6-1 defeat of the No. 4 seed and reigning Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin in their French Open singles final on Saturday.

The mask covered Swiatek’s face like the low-hanging autumn sun had covered most of the court during the one-hour-and-24-minute match. But it could not contain her smile, which creased her eyes as the song played on.

“I wasn’t expecting to win this trophy. It’s obviously amazing for me,” Swiatek said.

The Grand Slam singles title was the unseeded Swiatek’s first on tour and, of more sweeping significance, the first earned by any player from Poland, though she was swift to point out that she was merely extending a path that had been paved by others.

She mentioned by name Agnieszka Radwanska, whose 20 tour singles titles included the 2015 WTA year-end championship, and said: “I know there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to compare us. But I think I have to be really consistent for the next couple years for everybody to name me the best player in Poland because still I have a lot to do.”

Give her time. Swiatek, 19, is the youngest French Open women’s champion since an 18-year-old Monica Seles won her third consecutive singles title in 1992. She is also the latest in a kaleidoscope of fresh-faced Grand Slam champions in women’s singles. Of the past 14, nine have been first-time winners.

“I know my game isn’t developed perfectly,” Swiatek said. “Also I think the biggest change for me is going to be to be consistent. I think this is what women’s tennis is struggling with.”

Swiatek’s coronation had far less of the pomp and circumstance of other years because of the coronavirus pandemic. The crowd was capped at 1,000 paying spectators, to stem the spread of the virus and enable the event to proceed. Swiatek conceded that the tournament cocoon was a nurturing environment for her butterfly-like transformation.

She entered the tournament with a No. 54 world ranking, a recently acquired high-school diploma and a vague plan to test her game on the WTA Tour for what she described as a “gap year” before deciding whether she wanted to continue her education at a university.

University, it appears, will have to wait.

Swiatek did not drop a set at Roland Garros, befuddling the likes of the women’s world No. 1 and former champion Simona Halep, whom she dispatched in the round of 16 with her powerful forehand and angled groundstrokes. She lost only 28 games the entire tournament, and no more than five games in any match, facing stiff competition even though several top players did not enter the tournament, including No. 1-ranked Ashleigh Barty and the United States Open winner Naomi Osaka. Other contenders, like Serena Williams, struggled to make the transition to clay after playing in the U.S. Open last month.

After her defeat of Halep, the rest of the tournament, she said, felt like bonus rounds.

“It was so crazy for me winning against Simona that I already thought about the tournament as, like, my lifetime achievement,” Swiatek said. “Really, I had no expectations. I knew it’s going to be tough in the final. I didn’t want to stress a lot about it, so I just told myself that I don’t care and I tried to believe in that.”

In the final, Swiatek took Kenin’s intensity and raised her a level, pounding 25 winners against 17 unforced errors. She wasn’t completely impervious to nerves, squandering one set point while serving 5-3 in the first with a netted backhand on her way to having her serve broken. But she broke Kenin back to close out the first set.

Kenin, a 21-year-old American, had played the second week of the tournament with her left leg taped because of an upper thigh injury that grew more nettlesome as rounds piled on. With Swiatek leading by 2-1 and on serve in the second set, Kenin requested a medical timeout and left the court. She returned with her leg heavily wrapped but had no answer for Swiatek’s “spinny forehands,” as Kenin described them, or her angled shots. Swiatek, smelling blood on the red clay, closed out the second set in 31 minutes.

“I’m not going to use this as an excuse, but my leg obviously was not the best,” said Kenin, who finished with 10 winners and 23 unforced errors. “It’s obviously disappointing.”

Kenin took some solace afterward in her overall consistency in this most disjointed of Slam seasons. Between her bookended trips to the final, she had a fourth-round exit in the U.S. Open.

“I feel like I’m playing some really good tennis,” she said.

Swiatek, who bounced around the court as if she had pogo sticks for legs, didn’t exactly come from nowhere; in 2018, she won the Wimbledon junior singles title and the French Open junior doubles title. But her rapid rise the past two weeks left even her head spinning.

She maintained her poise and focus all the way until the trophy presentation. Asked to give a speech, she sputtered. Unlike the points in her match, her sentences were haphazardly constructed.

“I basically didn’t know what to say,” Swiatek said later with a smile. “I think I had a mess in my head, really.”

As she spoke, she looked at the stands, where the few hundred spectators included her father, Tomasz, who represented Poland in rowing at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Her voice cracked when she acknowledged him. Seeing his face, it began to sink in what she had accomplished. She had taken her father’s sporting legacy and burnished it.

When she held the trophy aloft, Swiatek said she thought of another athlete whom she greatly admired: Rafael Nadal, who will try for his 13th French Open title in Sunday’s men’s final.

“I was watching every year how Rafa lifts the trophy,” Swiatek said, “so it’s crazy I’m in the same place.”