Iga Swiatek had no answer against Jessica Pegula

FLUSHING, NY — No one expected any major upsets in Wednesday night’s US Open quarterfinals. No. 6 seed Jessica Pegula’s clean, flat shots are pretty damaging to most opponents on tour, but that hasn’t worked in the past against top seed Iga Swiatek and her impressive wall of topspin. Although Pegula was able to play into the one-sided matchup last season, winning two of their encounters, Swiatek still ended the year with a 6-0, 6-1 victory over Pegula that lasted 59 minutes and earned her a place in the WTA Finals. They haven’t played each other since. Nothing about Swiatek’s hard-court play this season suggested she would go down 6-2, 6-4 for failing to keep the ball in court in a strange and difficult matchup.

Aside from a brief first-round struggle, it was a businesslike US Open for Swiatek: efficiently outplaying far-out opponents and lower-seeded players alike. She handled her service games with ease, got plenty of first serves in, backed them up from the baseline, and didn’t face a single break point in her final three games. But Swiatek’s serving woes knocked her out of contention in the first set. She only got a third of her first serves in play and double-faulted twice. Pegula broke twice, building a 4-0 lead that proved insurmountable. Then the world No. 1 resorted to the obligatory momentum-killing “bathroom” break. While many players have used this strategy, it’s perhaps a little more noticeable with Swiatek, who has a wide range of tactics to slow the pace of play. (She usually holds up a racket to stop the server, something Danielle Collins memorably objected to at the Paris Olympics.) This sometimes irritating control of the pace of play is one way in which Swiatek models herself on her idol Rafael Nadal.

A few minutes later, Swiatek took to the court in a fresh, all-white outfit. Although there were some disastrously sweaty days in this tournament, Wednesday’s night session remained comfortably below 21 degrees. My notes are full of moments when it seemed as though Swiatek had made the necessary course correction and was about to hit back. In reality, however, that never happened. Swiatek continued to swing powerfully, hitting the ball far and wide, especially with the forehand side.

Meanwhile, Pegula has settled on a simple game plan that suits her skills well: steady pace in the middle of the court, clean defense while running to maintain pressure, and forcing Swiatek to rediscover her feel for groundstrokes. The top seed has never risen to the challenge, nor has she ever developed a new plan of attack. After an ultimately fatal break by Pegula at 3-3 in the second set, Swiatek slammed her racquet on the net in an uncharacteristic display of frustration and was also seen crying in the dressing room afterwards. In the press, she praised Pegula for her “tricky ball because it’s quite low and quite flat” and said the main reason she didn’t get into the match was her difficulties on serve. Although Swiatek initially rose to the top of the sport by paring her game down to this more monotonous, dominant style, it might benefit her to restore some other layers as fallbacks when her preferred style goes awry.

The quarterfinal loss continues a slightly worrying trend for Swiatek. Although she has continued to dominate Roland-Garros, winning four of the last five titles, she has struggled elsewhere. Swiatek has not reached the semifinals of any other major in the last two seasons, most of which she has spent as world No. 1. Although Swiatek continues to dominate in the smaller tour events, her rival Aryna Sabalenka has developed greater consistency in the majors and can now be named for the semifinals whenever she is in the draw. It is worth asking whether Swiatek is managing her energy to perform at her best at the most important moments of the year. She has spoken frequently this year about how exhausting she finds the new tour schedule, with its 10 mandatory 1,000-round tournaments, but told the press on Wednesday night that she plans to keep competing until November.

Swiatek’s exit is also a career highlight for Pegula, who contributes to the Americans’ unusual success at this US Open with four semifinalists in men’s and women’s singles. This was Pegula’s first appearance in the semifinals of a major championship after a 0-6 finish in her previous quarterfinals. In 2022, after being dispatched by Swiatek in the US Open quarterfinals, Pegula famously went to her press conference and opened a beer, partly to produce urine for a doping test and partly to “soften the loss.” She was the only current WTA top-10 player who had not yet appeared in a major semifinal, and she erased that dubious title with a lopsided victory over her most persistent bogeyman. This tests the known limits of whether a fracking heiress can also be inspirational.