Iga Swiatek arrived on court Thursday night in Melbourne with several streaks on the line. Chief among them: extend her perfect record against Marie Bouzkova to 3-0, ideally in straight sets once again.<\/p>\n
Australian Open:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n That second part looked shaky when she fell behind by a break in the second set, but the No. 2 seed never truly appeared in danger of losing the match, closing out a 6-2, 6-3 win in 1 hour and 19 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt great playing today,\u201d Swiatek said in her on-court interview. \u201cI felt more free than in my first round, so I really wanted to go for it. And for sure, the conditions also weren\u2019t easy. I don\u2019t know if you guys feel that, but on the court it\u2019s super windy.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I needed to adjust for that, and I\u2019m really happy with the performance for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n The victory sent her into the Australian Open third round for the seventh straight year. She has now reached the third round at 24 consecutive Grand Slam events; her last second-round exit came at the 2019 US Open, where she lost to Anastasija Sevastova.<\/p>\n With the result, Swiatek became the first WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz player in the Open Era to reach the Round of 32 at the first 24 women\u2019s singles Grand Slam events of a single decade.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how she got it done:<\/p>\n On the approach: At one point early in the second set, Swiatek was a perfect 9-for-9 winning points when approaching the net, a clear weapon for the World No. 2, who repeatedly used forward movement to take control of rallies.<\/p>\n She incorporated this tactic immediately, creeping toward the net before firing a backhand winner by Bouzkova to hold for 1-0. She followed the same blueprint to guide her to a 4-1 hold, affording her a lead she would only build on before claiming the first set in 38 minutes.<\/p>\n Fittingly, she ended the match with one final approach, this time finishing it with a forehand winner to seal the win.<\/p>\n Tour\u2019s best frontrunner: That forehand was one of 31 winners Swiatek hit (compared to just three from Bouzkova), many coming after she built comfortable leads in each set. There\u2019s a saying that fits her game well: give an inch, take a mile. Because, if an opponent offers even a sliver of space, Swiatek tends to take far more.<\/p>\n Exhibit A: the second set. Bouzkova broke for a 2-1 lead and consolidated for 3-1 but left the door open just a crack. Swiatek burst through, converting her third break point of the game to level at 3-3.<\/p>\n In all, she reeled off five straight games to finish the match, taking the lead and never looking back.<\/p>\n Give an inch, take a mile.<\/p>\n What\u2019s next: Swiatek will face No. 31 seed Anna Kalinskaya in the third round.\u00a0<\/p>\n She leads their head-to-head 2-1, losing in Dubai last season, but winning their two most recent meetings in Cincinnati and at the US Open in straight sets.<\/p>\n A third win in a row would send her to the Australian Open fourth round for the sixth time and keep alive her bid to complete the career Grand Slam with a title in Melbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iga Swiatek arrived on court Thursday night in Melbourne with several streaks on the line. Chief among them:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-384321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}