Tennis - Wimbledon - All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain - July 2, 2024 Poland's Iga Swiatek celebrates winning her first round match against Sofia Kenin of the U.S. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay
LONDON (Reuters) -Only once in her 21 previous Grand Slam appearances had Iga Swiatek perished in the first round - at Wimbledon in 2019.
When this year's All England Club draw pitted her against fellow Grand Slam champion Sofia Kenin, there were fears that Swiatek could be in for another short, and not very sweet, stay at the grasscourt major.
After all, the Polish top seed has yet to find her comfort zone on grass, having never reached a final on the sport's slickest surface, and she was also up against a rival who had toppled crowd favourite Coco Gauff in the opening round just 12 months ago.
Despite some jittery service games early on, with the first four games featuring nine break points and both players dropping serve, it took Swiatek just 79 minutes to safely negotiate past the potential first-round banana skin and demolish Kenin 6-3 6-4 on Tuesday under a closed Court One roof.
"It was a solid start and not an easy draw and I am glad to have the chance to play here again," said Swiatek, whose best showing here was a run to the quarter-finals last year.
"You can't get slowly into a Grand Slam, you have to be ready straight away ... on this surface it's not about the result but about the progress and see if I can do better than last year."
Swiatek finished the claycourt season riding high on a 19-match winning streak after destroying the opposition to win her fourth French Open title in five years.
She then opted to give the Wimbledon warm-up events a miss. Instead, her tune-up for the grasscourt major included giving her dancing shoes a three-hour workout during Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert in Liverpool.
When she walked on to Court One wearing headphones, she may well have been listening to "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me" and it soon became clear why Swiatek has become the standout of player of recent years.
She dealt with being break point down in the opening game by firing down an unreturnable serve.
She remained unfazed when she squandered four break point chances in the very next game by converting the fifth with a thunderbolt backhand winner.
She took it in her stride when she was broken in the next game by immediately breaking Kenin again, this time to love for a 3-1 lead.
From then on, an increasingly frustrated Kenin tried and failed to conjure the shots that had carried her all the way to the 2020 Australian Open title and she was powerless to stop Swiatek from chalking up a 20th successive win.
(Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, Editing by Alison Williams)
