The start of the tournament was more difficult for Świątek (WTA 1) than we could have expected, because… winning 6:4, 7:6(6) over Kamilla Rachimowa (WTA 104) took almost two hours. The Polish player made a lot of mistakes and gave the impression of being an unstable tennis player – one for whom a few successful actions are enough to unbalance her. In fact, we saw moments of frustration from her on Tuesday.
This time, Świątek was relentless, as if she had been advancing in a concentration tunnel since the first action. It took the Poles 23 minutes to decide the first set. She had five winning shots, committed only two unforced errors and allowed her opponent to score only seven points, losing only one of them on her own serve. It was the Pole’s 13th bagel this season, that is, a set won 6-0. A bakery in New York was opened.
US Open. Iga Świątek played with Ena Shibahara, who chose a new life in tennis
We saw on the court that the leader was facing a player in the second “hundred” of the WTA ranking, but this can be misleading because until last season the Japanese was only a doubles player – she played in the Wimbledon semi-finals (2021) and the Australian Open final (2023, she also won Roland Garros in mixed doubles (2024) – and only now has she decided to change her tennis life to singles.
Then Shibahara did a lot of groundwork. She climbed the WTA rankings, accumulating points in lower-ranking tournaments, and earned the right to play in the US Open qualifiers with a shot at the ribbon. There she won three matches and unexpectedly eliminated Daria Saville (WTA 95) in the first round. She had never played against a top ten WTA tennis player, so the match against Świątek – as Lech Sidor rightly noted on Eurosport – was simply an adventure for her.
