22nd January, 2023
Iga Swiatek, World Number one and No.7 American teenager Coco Gauff, crashed out of the Australian Open on Sunday, beaten by lower ranked players.
Wimbledon champion and 22nd seeded Elena Rybakina saw off Swiatek, winner of two Grand Slam trophies last season, and who came into the game with a 37-match winning streak.
The 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko, also beat Gauff 7-5, 6-3 to set up a quarter final war with Rybakina at Melbourne Park. Both reached this stage in Melbourne for the first time.
Pundits were hoping for a Swiatek-Gauff clash instead, as Gauff lost to Swiatek in the French Open last year.
“I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to try to chill out a little bit more,” Swiatek said.
“I felt the pressure, and I felt that ‘I don’t want to lose’ instead of ‘I want to win.’”
“I kept her under so much pressure,” said the 17th-seeded Ostapenko, a 25-year-old from Latvia about her match with Gauff.
“There was moments in the match where I was getting frustrated, because I normally can problem-solve, but today I feel like I didn’t have much answers to what she was doing,” said Gauff, an 18-year-old from Florida who was the runner-up to Swiatek at the French Open last June.
“There was balls I was hitting deep, and she was hitting them on the line and hitting them back deep, over and over again,” said Gauff, who wiped away tears during her news conference. “It’s just one of those days that just didn’t go my way and went her way.”
One key: Ostapenko went 3-for-3 converting her break chances, and Gauff was just 1-for-8 in such situations.
Rybakina, the 23-year-old who represents Kazakhstan meanwhile, used her big serve to produce a half-dozen aces, part of an overall 24-15 edge in total winners against Swiatek.