After gaining a 37-match winning streak that spanned six countries on three continents and lived for 132 days, 21-year-old Polish prodigy Iga Swiatek’s towering streak died when she lost 16 of the last 19 points, 6–4, 6–2 in a match against 32-year-old French marvel Alizé Cornet at Saturday’s Wimbledon tennis match.
Alizé Cornet is also a huge celebrity in the tennis world. She holds a record-tying 62nd consecutive grand slam main draw and also beat No. 1 player Serena Williams 1–6, 6–3, 6–4 in the third round of Wimbledon 2014, on the same court.
“I mean, what [Swiatek’s] done this year is out of this world,” Cornet said, according to The Washington Post, “and I can’t believe I’m the one that actually broke the streak.”
“As a solid player, [Cornet] used [the confusion] pretty well,” Swiatek said.
There are a variety of curious sports realities that anyone who follows and listens can learn. A notable example was that, just as Cornet predicted she would retire from the sport, she had her best big-tournament season, some sort of case victory through appreciation. In her 63rd major championship attempt, she reached her first major quarterfinal (at the 2022 Australian Open). At the French Open, she reached the 3rd round. She’s not sure, but she thinks the reason she’s doing so well might be this: “I think that’s why I’m playing so good. It’s because I know it’s almost the end.”
According to The Washington Post, “She [Cornet] walked to Court No. 1, the secondary of the stadium courts, remembering to smile because she might not walk to it again.” An interesting thing about Cornet is that when she won, she didn’t want to know the identity of her fourth-round opponent. “No, really, please,” she said. “I just beat the world number one. I want to enjoy for a few hours, not knowing what’s next, not envisioning and be like, I’m going to play her, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to know. Until tomorrow I’m not going to try to be on the social media because for sure I will find out.”
During the second set, Swiatek sped up again after slowing down and being less vigorous with the ball. The sudden change (especially since she had been moving aggressively before) caused her downfall and loss in this match. “Well, basically the thing that I changed this year is I started being more and more aggressive,” she said. “It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive. But here I couldn’t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit. I was kind of pushing the ball, which sometimes was actually okay … But there in the second set, yeah, I kind of made a few attempts to speed up again and it didn’t work out. I didn’t come back to being solid. Also, you know, when you play aggressively and you suddenly change the way you play, it’s not easy to keep that. Yeah, so I got a little bit confused.”
Although it seemed like a huge slip-up for Swiatek, it wasn’t nearly as bad for 18-year-old American Coco Gauff, another player who lost in the third round. In fact, at age 15, she even reached the fourth round here at Wimbledon in 2019. But her opponent, Russian-American Amanda Anisimova, won 6–7 (7–4), 6–2 against her. Yet this loss doesn’t disappoint Gauff. It only dismisses her.
“Well, I mean, the start of the clay season there were matches, there was my first match of the clay season, I was up 4–0 and lost the set, kind of lost the match really because of mentality. Today I was up 3–0 and went down a break. I was able to somehow find a way to win that set (from 4–1 down in the tiebreaker). For me, that just shows improvement in that aspect,” said Gauff, according to The Washington Post.
After she won, 20-year-old Anisimova took a seat on the grass in wonder. After beating Gauff in the 2017 U.S. Open Girls Singles Final, she made a sizzling run to the 2019 French Open Semifinals, even after enduring the sudden death of her father (at age 52) before that U.S. Open.
Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/iga-swiatek-coco-gauff-lose-wimbledon/
Alizé Cornet is also a huge celebrity in the tennis world. She holds a record-tying 62nd consecutive grand slam main draw and also beat No. 1 player Serena Williams 1–6, 6–3, 6–4 in the third round of Wimbledon 2014, on the same court.
“I mean, what [Swiatek’s] done this year is out of this world,” Cornet said, according to The Washington Post, “and I can’t believe I’m the one that actually broke the streak.”
“As a solid player, [Cornet] used [the confusion] pretty well,” Swiatek said.
There are a variety of curious sports realities that anyone who follows and listens can learn. A notable example was that, just as Cornet predicted she would retire from the sport, she had her best big-tournament season, some sort of case victory through appreciation. In her 63rd major championship attempt, she reached her first major quarterfinal (at the 2022 Australian Open). At the French Open, she reached the 3rd round. She’s not sure, but she thinks the reason she’s doing so well might be this: “I think that’s why I’m playing so good. It’s because I know it’s almost the end.”
According to The Washington Post, “She [Cornet] walked to Court No. 1, the secondary of the stadium courts, remembering to smile because she might not walk to it again.” An interesting thing about Cornet is that when she won, she didn’t want to know the identity of her fourth-round opponent. “No, really, please,” she said. “I just beat the world number one. I want to enjoy for a few hours, not knowing what’s next, not envisioning and be like, I’m going to play her, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to know. Until tomorrow I’m not going to try to be on the social media because for sure I will find out.”
During the second set, Swiatek sped up again after slowing down and being less vigorous with the ball. The sudden change (especially since she had been moving aggressively before) caused her downfall and loss in this match. “Well, basically the thing that I changed this year is I started being more and more aggressive,” she said. “It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive. But here I couldn’t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit. I was kind of pushing the ball, which sometimes was actually okay … But there in the second set, yeah, I kind of made a few attempts to speed up again and it didn’t work out. I didn’t come back to being solid. Also, you know, when you play aggressively and you suddenly change the way you play, it’s not easy to keep that. Yeah, so I got a little bit confused.”
Although it seemed like a huge slip-up for Swiatek, it wasn’t nearly as bad for 18-year-old American Coco Gauff, another player who lost in the third round. In fact, at age 15, she even reached the fourth round here at Wimbledon in 2019. But her opponent, Russian-American Amanda Anisimova, won 6–7 (7–4), 6–2 against her. Yet this loss doesn’t disappoint Gauff. It only dismisses her.
“Well, I mean, the start of the clay season there were matches, there was my first match of the clay season, I was up 4–0 and lost the set, kind of lost the match really because of mentality. Today I was up 3–0 and went down a break. I was able to somehow find a way to win that set (from 4–1 down in the tiebreaker). For me, that just shows improvement in that aspect,” said Gauff, according to The Washington Post.
After she won, 20-year-old Anisimova took a seat on the grass in wonder. After beating Gauff in the 2017 U.S. Open Girls Singles Final, she made a sizzling run to the 2019 French Open Semifinals, even after enduring the sudden death of her father (at age 52) before that U.S. Open.
Sources: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/07/02/iga-swiatek-coco-gauff-lose-wimbledon/
