No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek made a victorious debut at the Korea Open 2025 presented by Motiva on Thursday, defeating Sorana Cirstea 6-3, 6-2 to post her sixth win in six meetings with the Romanian — and afterwards, she revealed the family connection that made it extra special.<\/p>\n
Seoul:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n Swiatek’s father, Tomasz, was a rower who competed in the men’s quadruple sculls event at one Olympic Games — Seoul 1988. This may be his daughter’s first time in the city, but she’s been hearing about it for all of her life.<\/p>\n “The Olympics in 1988 were the highlight of his career, and he’s been telling us stories about it since me and my sister were kids,” Swiatek said in her on-court interview. “So I’m happy to explore this city — he’s been talking about being here as a great adventure. I play a different sport, but still we’re at the Olympic venue and I’m surprised by how the whole city is still appreciating the Olympic tradition. It’s great, because this event is the best the world has in any area. Playing here for sure is an honor, and maybe next year my dad will come!”<\/p>\n Playing her first match since losing in the US Open quarterfinals to Amanda Anisimova, Swiatek got off to a fast start against an opponent to whom she has only ever dropped one set — the first set of their first meeting back at the 2022 Australian Open. She hammered a pair of forehand winners en route to breaking Cirstea in the first game, and swiftly built a 5-1 lead.<\/p>\n Cirstea still battled hard, saving the first five points against her with fine serving and getting one of the breaks back as Swiatek lapsed into error — but another forehand winner from the Pole sealed her sixth set point. In the second set, Swiatek still had to navigate a few untidy moments — she tallied 19 winners to 21 unforced errors overall — but nonetheless saved all three break points against her, and converted her first match point as Cirstea sent a forehand long.<\/p>\n Swiatek advanced to her 13th quarterfinal in 15 tournaments this year (excluding team competitions). She will next face a fellow major champion — either No. 8 seed Emma Raducanu or Barbora Krejcikova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek made a victorious debut at the Korea Open 2025 presented by Motiva on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":{"0":"post-165151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}