The queen is dead. It took three straight titles and 26 consecutive match wins at Roland-Garros for Iga Swiatek to finally lose on the Parisian clay. Aryna Sabalenka deservedly got the scalp, outlasting Swiatek in a Thursday semifinal played at a level so blisteringly high it obliterated any thought that the other semi would take place right afterwards. (Apologies to Coco Gauff, who could absolutely beat Sabalenka in the final, and home hero Lois Boisson.) Swiatek might have surrendered her crown, but not without playing some of the best tennis of the year so far. Rarely should a defeat, especially one by the close-not-close scoreline of 7-6 (1), 4-6, 6-0, inspire this much praise for the loser.
Part of that is because Swiatek has now gone a full year without winning a title. This isn’t as apocalyptic as it sounds for a player who has won five majors. A single point separated her from the Australian Open final, and how bad can a slump be when you remain in the Top 10? But some of her losses were worrying, as was her demeanor on court. Watch the wrong players and you might not get a full appreciation for how stressful this sport is, in which grueling tournaments yield only one winner and scores of losers every week.
Swiatek looks as if each match she loses is the most painful defeat of her life. Everybody on tour hates to lose, but Swiatek seems to viscerally hate the process of losing, too. She wants to win desperately, but the more she wants to win the worse she plays, and the worse she plays the more agitated she grows. She wears her anguish on her sleeve during matches, either by having it out with her box or letting the tears flow. On the one hand, this is refreshing to watch: Swiatek can react like you or me might if dropped into this torture chamber masquerading as a game, rather than resort to compartmentalization and cliche. On the other, an 11th Masters 1000 title didn’t seem worth this much misery.
In the Roland-Garros semifinal with Sabalenka, Swiatek managed to channel her frustration into competitive purposes. Both women, faced with the greatest opponent of their careers so far, flattened out their forehands and swung for the fences. This was a slow clay court made to look like the 1990s grass that olds still wax poetic about, and the tennis caught fire immediately. Swiatek has come close to losing at Roland-Garros in her world-beating incarnation three times before, most notably to Naomi Osaka, who held match point against her in 2024. None of those matches burned as hot as this.
Sabalenka came out in peak form, murdering every rally before it could mature. Never have Swiatek’s double faults been so obviously due to the threat of a pulverizing return instead of her own nerves. Somehow she clawed back. At her best, her game rounds and smooths into a divine force field. What shots you hit and how well you hit them become irrelevant, Swiatek inevitably returns the ball as a comet to your feet. It feels light as air to watch, though it offers the opponent no time to breathe it in. Sabalenka has arguably the best forehand in the world, yet I thought Swiatek was going to utterly ruin her confidence in it with the awesome pace and depth she chucked to that side of the court. She almost did before Sabalenka recovered to win the first set in a tiebreak.
Swiatek loves a routine: though the match was indoors, she still wore a lavender-colored cap, across which a jagged line of sweat crept as the match went on. She religiously takes bathroom breaks after the first sets of her matches, win or lose. She mouths something as she enters her service motion, as if she needs to psych herself up to be able to play a point in front of thousands of people. And she loves her slow clay tennis, where she can strafe forehands with spin and place them wherever she likes. That she necessarily abandoned comfort to trade bombs required a bravery and flexibility that most players can never ask of themselves.
Another thing Swiatek loves is the No. 1 ranking. She’s held it for 125 weeks and has copped to mourning its loss in the past. As she has struggled over the past 12 months, Sabalenka has enjoyed the best year of her career, running up a yawning gap in ranking points. At times Swiatek has seemed to play tennis with that in mind, despite the fact that she can’t do anything about the gulf in the short term. After this match, though, Swiatek seemed past that.
“Losing early in Rome gave me some time and perspective, so I wasn’t really thinking about points here at this tournament. Obviously, looking at the math, I lost many points right now, but I know that it doesn’t really matter,” she said in her post-match press conference. For just a second, she laughed as she said it.
In the third set, Swiatek’s slump caught up with her, and winning just six points in the last six games was an entirely unfitting end to her glorious run at Roland-Garros. Explanations come easily, though: Sabalenka, who is playing the best tennis of her career, spent the clay season testing her legs and lungs in deep tournament runs, while Swiatek has been trying just to find her form. The intensity of this match was so high that it felt like a test of pain tolerance, like the players were keeping each other’s hands pressed against a hot stove and waiting to see whose skin burned first. The last time these two dueled at this level, Swiatek had the match toughness and confidence to play three sets in hell. Here, she only had two in her, while Sabalenka was more accustomed to the heat. It happens. By the time I realized Swiatek would lose, she had already convinced me she’ll soon be winning again.
