A three-set win for Iga Swiatek against Marta Kostyuk on Saturday didn’t just put the former World No. 1 into the quarterfinals of the National Bank Open for a second time. It also snapped one of the most notable droughts on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz.<\/p>\n
Swiatek had lost her last seven three-set matches against Top 20 players dating back to last September — and she would’ve had reason to despair after losing the first set against Kostyuk from twice being a break ahead. But instead, the six-time Grand Slam singles champion rebounded in a big way — and never lost serve in the second and third sets to score a 3-6, 6-1, 6-2 victory.<\/p>\n
In all, Swiatek saved nine break points across the second and third sets to score any kind of Top 20 win for the first time since the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in May: three at 2-0, and three more when she served for the set. The tension of the moment was later evident in a five-deuce final game, where she needed six match points — and saved two break points — to wrap up the win in just over 2 hours.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, Swiatek confessed she “knew [she] could play better” after a first set where the two players combined for seven service breaks — and focused on being “more brave.”<\/p>\n
“In the second I came out … playing a bit faster and more heavy, and pushing Marta a little bit more,” she said. “I knew I can, you know, keep being solid while doing that. So then, like, game by game I felt like it was a good plan and a good choice, and I went for it.”<\/p>\n
The effort also snapped Kostyuk’s winning streak in three-set matches. She had won her last seven dating back to a first-round loss to Elsa Jacquemot at the Australian Open in January, where she suffered an ankle injury.<\/p>\n
Swiatek will face No. 15 seed Diana Shnaider next, who scored a milestone of her own by beating Jessica Pegula. The 6-3, 6-3 win for Shnaider against the two-time champion was her first in five attempts, and reversed the result of their semifinal match at the Mubadala DC Open last week.<\/p>\n
More to come…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A three-set win for Iga Swiatek against Marta Kostyuk on Saturday didn’t just put the former World No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428,1959],"class_list":["post-807300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807300","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=807300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}