Iga Swiatek crashes out of US Open as Pole ‘loses control’ against Ostapenko
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Iga Swiatek admitted that she “felt no control” after being knocked out of the US Open in the last 16 to Latvia’s Jelena Ostapenko. Her hard-hitting opponent ended the 22-year-old’s title defence as the Polish star was forced into a flurry of mistakes on Sunday evening, despite winning the first set at Flushing Meadows.
Ostapenko appears to be an Achilles heel for the previous year’s champion, having won all four of their meetings and once again claimed a 3-6 6-3 6-1 to set up a next-round clash with home star Coco Gauff in New York.
After being dominated in the final two sets, Swiatek admitted that she struggled to deal with her opponent and was unable to pinpoint the exact reason why she keeps getting beaten by the 20th seed.
“She plays well against me. I mean, I don’t have any comparison because she always did that,” said Swiatek. “But I’m just surprised that my level changed so drastically because usually when I play bad, I play bad at the beginning, then I kind of catch up or just problem solve. This time it was totally the opposite.
“I don’t really know what happened with my game,” Swiatek said. “I felt no control suddenly. I just have to watch and see ’cause, yeah, I didn’t really know why I started making so many mistakes.”
Though Swiatek had lost their previous three encounters, she had not faced Ostapenko since February 2022 – since then she had gone on to make a 37-match winning run and shot to the top of the WTA rankings, though after exiting the last Major of the year at the last 16 stage she will relinquish being number one to current No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka.
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“Usually I’m not looking at numbers, but overall I love them. I would love to, like, extend this record a little bit longer,” Swiatek added. “This is something that when I was younger, I actually kind of wanted to break some record or have something.
“I already did that ’cause I already won a Slam as a first Polish player. Obviously being No. 1 as the third player in history is great. But for sure when it happens, when you lose it, there are some sad emotions.
“All these great players know it’s going to come back if you’re going to work hard, focus on the right things, just develop as a player.”
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