Yulia Putintseva ended Iga Swiatek’s 21-match win streak at Wimbledon by “playing fast”
She rushed the world No. 1 from the baseline during the points, and took as little time as possible between them.
How does one go about ending the 21-match win streak of the top-ranked player in the world? Yulia Putintseva made it sound pretty simple.
“I was just focused on playing fast, and not giving her any time, and that worked, and that’s pretty much it,” the 29-year-old, 35th-ranked Moscow native told a cheering crowd on No. 1 Court crowd after beating Iga Swiatek, 3-6, 6-1, 6-2.
It was Putintseva’s first win over the Pole in five tries. It was far and away the stunner of the fortnight so far, and it left the ladies’ event looking and feeling completely different from how it did just a few hours earlier. Now, instead of watching Swiatek try to march toward her first Wimbledon title, we’ll be watching the rest of the field in a mad scramble through the second week. Just about anyone has a chance.
Putintseva, as she said, beat Swiatek by playing fast, both during points and in between them. Once she found a baseline rhythm midway through the second set, she gave as good, or better, than she got in the toe-to-toe rallies that defined the match. She stood her ground, took Swiatek’s heavy-topspin strokes off the short hop, and rifled them right back at her. More often than not, it was Iga who blinked—or shanked.
“When the turning point happened, I start to play, like, really, really good,” Putintseva said. “At some point, I was playing fearless. I was just, ‘I can do it, I have to believe 100 percent.’”
One traditional strategy for beating Swiatek is to rush her on her forehand side; with her extreme Western grip, it takes time for her to get her racquet through the hitting zone. Putintseva had success doing that, especially with her serve.
She also had success sending her biting backhand slice skidding through the grass; it forced Swiatek to hit up on ball, something she couldn’t always do accurately.
For good measure, Putintseva also threw in drop shots from both sides at opportune moments, and she peaked in the third set with a topspin lob that landed six inches inside the baseline, and essentially sealed Swiatek’s fate.
At some point, I was playing fearless. Yulia Putintseva
By the latter stages of the third set, Putintseva was moving so fast from one point to the next, she never had time to get nervous, and Swiatek never had time to regroup.
“I think, yeah, today I’m happy, extra happy, because she didn’t lose it; I took it,” Putintseva said. “Like, I was playing really well. This is for me the most important.”
Swiatek agreed with that assessment, to a degree.
“I totally let her come back to the game in the second set,” Iga said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I made some mistakes, as well.”
“Bur for sure, she used her chance.”
Swiatek said her biggest regret was not taking more time off after winning Madrid, Rome and Roland Garros back-to-back-to-back in May and June.
“I didn’t really rest properly,” she said. “I’m not going to make this mistake again. After such a tough clay-court season, I really must have my recovery.”
The problem for Swiatek at Wimbledon is that, no matter what she does after Paris, she’ll never have more than three weeks before she has to be ready for a new surface. At least this year she’ll return to her favored clay courts in Paris at the Olympics.
“I lost in the third round; I felt like I underachieved a little bit,” she said today. “But it’s tennis, so you have to move on. I’ll have many more chances this year to show my game. I’ll just focus on that.”
Putintseva, after playing the match of her career, wasn’t quite ready to move on and think about her next one, against Jelena Ostapenko.
“I need to relax,” she said, smiling. “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
For now, she’ll keep basking in the glow of this victory. When she was asked what it felt like to beat the No. 1 player in the world, she started by saying, “I mean…it’s good.”
Then she laughed and corrected herself:
“It’s great!”