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World No. 1 Iga Swiatek has started her journey to what she hopes will be a gold medal in Paris. She defeated Diane Parry of France 6-1, 6-1 in 74 minutes in a second-round match at Roland Garros.
Swiatek was able to diagnose and exploit Parry’s main weaknesses early and often. The biggest was her second serve, which Swiatek took advantage of for most of the match. Parry only scored a handful of points off her second serve all match. Swiatek also took a chance and played to Parry’s forehand, which is bigger than her other shots, but was much less accurate overall.
It worked. Swiatek had Parry on defense the entire match, just trying to survive from point to point. Parry had her best game when she was trying to prevent Swiatek from bageling her in the first set. Swiatek was up 5-0 but Parry managed to get her serve to behave long enough to actually control the court. It was the only game she won in the first set.
The same thing happened with the only game Parry won in the second set. When her first serve was working, she could force Swiatek to make errors. But when it wasn’t, Swiatek simply gobbled her up.
This should be just the start of Swiatek’s domination of the competition, because Roland Garros is her playground. She has experienced more success there than any woman in recent memory, and the only man she can be compared to at this point is Rafael Nadal. She’s won the French Open in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and she’s still just 23 years old.
With this victory, Swiatek has set a new personal best for Olympic performance. She was eliminated in the second round at the previous Olympics in Tokyo, but has now advanced to the third round, where she’ll face either Diana Shnaider, who is from Russia but competing under the neutral athletes flag, or Xiyu Wang of China.
