Rybakina pulls away to defeat Swiatek in Australian Open quarterfinals
For the first time since reaching the 2023 final, Elena Rybakina will play in the semifinals of the Australian Open after upsetting No. 2 seed Iga Swiatek in Wednesday's quarterfinals 7-5, 6-1.
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Fifth seed Rybakina pulled away in the 1 hour and 35-minute match by winning eight of the last nine games, and leveled her all-time record against Swiatek to 6-6 in the process. After she was broken in the first game of the match, the 2025 ace leader on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz rounded into form on serve in stunning fashion -- despite only landing 49% of her first serves in the match. She dug out of a 0-40 deficit at 1-1 in the first set, and only lost 12 points in eight subsequent service games.
Eleven of her 26 winners were aces, and she hit just 19 unforced errors -- but 14 of those miscues came in the first set. Swiatek, by contrast, struggled for the same consistency. She hit just 10 winners, and her error count ballooned to 25 by the match's end.
Rybakina earned her 18th victory in her last 19 matches, dating back to last October, and her eighth consecutive win over a Top 10 player. The 2022 Wimbledon champion awaits the winner of the all-American quarterfinal between No. 4 seed Amanda Anisimova and No. 6 seed Jessica Pegula in the hopes of reaching her third career Grand Slam singles final.
"I'm really pleased with the win," Rybakina said in her on-court interview. "We know each other pretty well, and I was just trying to stay aggressive. In the first set, the first serve wasn't working for both of us, so we were trying to step in on the second serve and put pressure on each other. In the second set, I just started to play more free, serve better, and I'm really happy with the win."
Swiatek told reporters that she struggled to keep up with the "high intensity" match after a first set that could've gone either way.
"In first set I think it was a difference of a couple points," she said. "She also, I thought, gave me some chances on her serve, and sometimes I used them. Sometimes it was, like, 30-All and, for example, I missed one return. You know, I wanted to be aggressive on the second serve, so sometimes, yeah, will make mistakes. But if you want to break, you need to make it in in the moment like that.
"Then in the second set I thought, I don't know, that the pace from her got a little bit even higher, and she was more precise, and maybe I dropped the intensity at the beginning especially."
"I know what I need to improve, and it's kind of the same stuff that I had in my mind before the tournament as well. So there's no breakthrough lesson," she continued. "I'm just going to keep doing my job, and hopefully the next tournament I'll get some stuff, you know, settled in terms of what I wanted to do with my game."
More to come...