Iga Swiatek puts on tennis masterclass against Belinda Bencic to reach Wimbledon final

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THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, LONDON — Iga Świątek is not messing around as she moves into her first Wimbledon final.

She dominated Belinda Bencic 6-2, 6-0 Thursday to set up a meeting with Amanda Anisimova of the U.S., with the controlled, clinical aggression on both serve and return that has defined her tennis the past fortnight.

Neither Świątek nor Anisimova has reached this stage before, but the Pole is the vastly more experienced player. She is a five-time Grand Slam champion who has spent 125 weeks as the world No. 1, even if by her own extremely high standards, she has fallen on harder times of late. The win makes Swiatek the only active WTA Tour player to reach a Grand Slam final on all three surfaces and a victory on Saturday would be Świątek’s first title anywhere since winning a fourth Roland Garros title in June 2024, in what will be only her second final in that time.

She still looks like a different player to the one who struggled throughout stretches of the last year. Her ability to ride out difficult moments has been a particular feature of this Wimbledon run, in contrast to the way in which she had started letting tight matches run away from her, by overhitting when things got tight and sending herself into a doom loop of mistakes. It happened in her shock defeat to a redlining Yulia Putintseva, who made one unforced error in a 13-game stretch of their third-round meeting here last year.

Świątek was so good against Bencic that there weren’t too many tight moments. It briefly looked like things might get interesting when consecutive double faults helped give Bencic a couple of break points at the start of the second set, but Świątek quickly closed the door and got back to serving efficiently and returning with devastating aggression.

She won 83 percent of first-serve points and made 90 percent of returns.

Those strong foundations gave Świątek the platform to produce the kind of masterclass that brought back memories of the 2022 version of her who won two Grand Slams and won 37 matches in a row. She played with variety when needed, volleying with confidence for instance, but she barely needed to veer from her Plan A because it was working so well.

After winning the first three games of the match, confidence was coursing through Świątek. Bencic took a little while to settle, not helped by a nasty-looking fall in the second set. Play was paused after a spectator required medical assistance in the crowd, but Świątek did not let up.

In the final game of the first set, she chased down a drop shot and flicked away a forehand passing-shot winner; In the first point of the second, she crunched a forehand winner down the line to send the message that there was going to be no quarter.

At the start of the next game she middled a crosscourt backhand return winner past her demoralised opponent. “She’s in the zone,” nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova said in commentary for the BBC.

A feature of watching Świątek during 2022, and whenever she’s been at her best, is wondering not whether she will lose, but how many games her opponent will win. She streaked away to a 5-0 lead in the second set, before crunching a backhand return to bring up a first match point.

Bencic saved it, but Świątek secured a trademark bagel set a couple of points later with another backhand winner, after 71 minutes on court. A statement victory, for a first Grand Slam final on grass.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women’s Tennis

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