RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — There are no free lunches at the WTA Finals, not when you have the world’s best eight singles players from 2025 all gathered under the same roof at King Saud University Indoor Arena.
Right out of the box on Saturday night, in the very first singles match, two of the four Grand Slam winners faced off.
After a prematch snack of fresh strawberries, No. 2 seed Iga Swiatek, the Wimbledon winner, defeated No. 7 Australian Open champion Madison Keys 6-1, 6-2.
“Kind of [happy] with everything,” Swiatek said. “Mostly my serve and overall focus. I was in the zone from the beginning to the end, and I really wanted to keep it that way.”
Did Swiatek think Keys’ extended layoff was a factor in the result?
“I’m not in her head — so I can’t really say,” she said. “But from my experience, yeah, not playing for a longer time can make you a bit rusty.”
Keys, who hadn’t played in 68 days after losing in the first round of the US Open, looked sluggish and her timing seemed off. Coaches will tell you it’s difficult to replicate the intensity of match play in practice.
Swiatek won 12 of 15 games and 58 of 87 points, converting five of eight break points. It was over in 61 minutes. The 24-year-old from Poland now leads the head-to-head 6-2. Previously, they had split this year’s two matches. Swiatek has won 62 tour-level matches so far in 2025, the most on tour.
After winning on the red clay at Roland Garros four times in five years (2020-24), Swiatek lost in semifinals earlier this year to World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka. What followed was a stunning victory at Wimbledon, a slick surface she wondered if she’d ever master.
One of this year’s initiatives under coach Wim Fissette, Swiatek explained, was playing more aggressively on hard courts. In essence, she accepted more risk to reap greater rewards.
“I think technically for sure the way I played on faster surfaces, the way I handled sometimes faster balls that were an issue for me in previous seasons,” Swiatek told reporters Friday. “This was something that I felt improved totally.
“Also the speed of the serve. I don’t know, I think I was in some kind of a ranking of fifth or something in aces this year. That’s impossible. But my serve improved. I would love for my percentage to always be consistent. That’s the next goal.”
The more immediate target is a title here, to go with her 2023 victory in Cancun. Swiatek recorded her first win in the Serena Williams Group, while Keys may well have to win her last two matches, against No. 4 Amanda Anisimova and No. 6 Elena Rybakina, to advance to the semifinals.
Keys, who returned to the practice courts after Saturday’s match, said she picked up a minor injury during the summer.
“I just kept trying to play through it,” she said. “It was just one of those things where I couldn’t ever be 100 percent. Just felt like the best decision for me to have the best opportunity for the Finals was to kind of take some time, get healthy.”
Keys is participating in her second year-end championship, going back to her initial breakthrough in 2016. Her record is now 1-3.