Iga Swiatek and Alex Eala achieve firsts on the grass as Wimbledon comes into view

New York Times

a day ago

'I didn't expect to win this match' isn't a phrase that comes out of a five-time Grand Slam champion's mouth very often. But after Iga Świątek cruised past Jasmine Paolini 6-1, 6-3 to reach the first WTA Tour grass-court final of her career, it was the first thing on her mind.
Perhaps Paolini being a Wimbledon finalist last year was a factor. Perhaps Świątek never going beyond the quarterfinals in south-west London was too. But for 16 games Friday in Bad Homburg, it was the Pole who looked like the master of the grass. She's looked that way for most of the tournament in Germany, using her serve like she hasn't done for a while to get out of adversity against the powerful players that have troubled her in the past.
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Against Paolini, however, Świątek was dominant. Her confidence on her forehand oozed out into heavy, sharply angled balls that kept Paolini pinned behind the baseline, stopping her from coming into the net, where she has the edge on Świątek. She leapt on Paolini's serve at every opportunity, zipping return winners past her opponent — something she has been more familiar with happening to her in recent times. Świątek broke Paolini five times and had break points for a sixth, ultimately easing into her first final since last year's French Open, in which she will face world No. 3 Jessica Pegula.
It caps a strange 12 months for Świątek, in which she has had her less-than-perfect results scrutinized at her best events over and above her improvements across the calendar. She is No. 3 in the WTA Tour rankings race, just a few hundred points behind No. 2 Coco Gauff, and made the semifinals at both the Australian and French Opens. She was a point from the final in Melbourne and she has made the semifinals of five other tournaments, including in Bad Homburg. But she has become synonymous with era-defining excellence on clay, and so her dips from that excellence, which have included at times heavy defeats, have taken greater space than her successes.
The same cannot be said for Alexandra Eala, who so memorably beat Świątek at the Miami Open in March. On the same day as Świątek's success, Eala, 20, became the first Filipino to reach a WTA Tour final, beating Varvara Gracheva 7-5, 2-6, 6-3 at Eastbourne in the UK. It's the latest in a succession of firsts for Eala and Filipino tennis, and it is not one of her biggest wins: in Miami, she beat Madison Keys and Jelena Ostapenko, two more Grand Slam champions, as well as Świątek.
But Eala's use of angle, a devastatingly powerful and disguised down-the-line forehand, and an improved serve — which has looked attackable throughout her rise inside the WTA top 100 — could foretell more success on the grass, a surface which appears to suit her game. Her mastery of the wind on the south coast of the UK, which buffeted across the courts and tested players' limits, also showed off her ability to adapt the length of her swing and to redirect an incoming ball rather than swinging out on every shot.
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At Wimbledon, she will achieve another first. Eala will play defending champion Barbora Krejčíková on Centre Court, and with Krejčíková having withdrawn from Eastbourne with a thigh injury, the ingredients are there for another announcement of her ability to the tennis world. First, Eala will go in search of her first WTA Tour title, with a final against Maya Joint Saturday, the same day that Świątek and Pegula will play.
(Photos: Getty Images)