Then it died as all of them do.
On a Saturday when this Wimbledon misplaced each its French Open ladies’s finalists within the third spherical, No. 1 Iga Swiatek and No. 11 Coco Gauff, Swiatek’s towering streak died as streaks do at times: in a hasty fizzle. It ended when she misplaced 16 of the final 19 factors and mentioned, “I was pretty confused about my tactics.” It ended when the 21-year-old Polish marvel bowed, 6-4, 6-2, to a artful type, 32-year-old Alizé Cornet of France, a marvel herself in her record-tying 62nd consecutive Grand Slam major draw.
“I mean, what she’s done this year is out of this world,” Cornet mentioned, “and I can’t believe I’m the one that actually broke the streak.”
So after Golubic, Kasatkina, Sabalenka, Sakkari, Kontaveit, Kalinina, Tauson, Kerber, Keys, Halep, Sakkari once more, Golubic once more, Brengle, Gauff, Kvitova, Pegula, Osaka, Prisacariu, Buzarnescu, Lys, Raducanu, Samsonova, Sabalenka once more, Ruse, Azarenka, Andreescu, Sabalenka once more, Jabeur, Tsurenko, Riske-Amritraj, Kovinic, Zheng, Pegula once more, Kasatkina once more, Gauff once more, Fett and Pattinama Kerkhove, the reply lastly got here up Cornet.
Actually, she’s the identical Cornet who beat No. 1 Serena Williams 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 within the third spherical of Wimbledon 2014, on the identical courtroom, besides now she’s moderately the Helena Sukova of the twenty first century, Sukova having ended Martina Navratilova’s document 74-match successful streak in late 1984.
“As a solid player, she used [the confusion] pretty well,” Swiatek mentioned.
Anyone following and listening might have realized all method of curious sports activities realities. For one, Cornet has had her greatest big-tournament 12 months simply as she had reckoned she would exit her sport, some form of case of victory by appreciation. She reached her first main quarterfinal (at the 2022 Australian Open) in her 63rd main strive. She reached the third spherical at the French. She’s undecided, however she thinks it is likely to be this: “I think that’s why I’m playing so good. It’s because I know it’s almost the end.”
She walked to Court No. 1, the secondary of the stadium courts, remembering to smile as a result of she may not stroll to it once more.
She received, then didn’t need to know the id of her fourth-round opponent. “No, really, please,” she mentioned. “I just beat the world number one. I want to enjoy for a few hours, not knowing what’s next, not envisioning and be like, I’m going to play her, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to know. Until tomorrow I’m not going to try to be on the social media because for sure I will find out.”
(It’s Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, No. 44 to Cornet’s No. 37.)
Then there’s the reminder that grass-court tennis has left many a participant misplaced between the blades, even a maestro resembling Swiatek. Suddenly, she’s not contesting the factors a lot, and she or he’s received a sitter overhead at 2-4 and 15-all of the second set that she whales into the underside of the wall behind the baseline.
Swiatek truly laughs at herself, all the time an excellent signal.
“Well, basically the thing that I changed this year is I started being more and more aggressive,” she mentioned. “It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive. But here I couldn’t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit. I was kind of pushing the ball, which sometimes was actually okay … But there in the second set, yeah, I kind of made a few attempts to speed up again and didn’t work out. I didn’t come back to being solid. Also, you know, when you play aggressively and you suddenly change the way you play, it’s not easy to keep that. Yeah, so I got a little bit confused.”
She mentioned at one level, “I didn’t tank it, but I just didn’t know what to do,” because the grass retains the ability to flummox even any person who simply received 37 straight and a French Open tucked amid.
It doesn’t flummox Gauff as a lot — she reached the fourth spherical right here in 2019 at age 15 — however the French finalist confronted grass and wind and, most significantly, New Jersey-born Floridian Amanda Anisimova, whose 6-7 (7-4), 6-2, 6-1 win dismissed Gauff however didn’t disillusion her.
“I think I’ve grown a lot in my mentality over this trip,” the 18-year-old mentioned.
To describe: “Well, I mean, the start of the clay season there were matches, there was my first match of the clay season, I was up 4-0 and lost the set, kind of lost the match really because of mentality. Today I was up 3-0 and went down a break. I was able to somehow find a way to win that set (from 4-1 down in the tiebreaker). For me, that just shows improvement in that aspect.”
She moved on to blended doubles with Jack Sock, a gap win filled with smiles from each Americans, after which she made the stroll from Court No. 3 to the locker room, surrounded by a throng of admirers. She posed for umpteen selfies and signed umpteen autographs, a bustling sign of her budded stature, and she or he mentioned: “For me, it’s crazy that people get nervous to meet me ’cause I’m not — well I guess the way I watch myself on the court, I do look intimidating. Off the court I’m not intimidating, so I try to tell them: ‘Just chill out. Let’s have a conversation.’ ”
As she walked by with the gathering blob of life round her, her opponent had fallen — onto the grass in surprise. Anisimova, 20, who beat Gauff within the 2017 U.S. Open women singles ultimate, had made a torrid run to the 2019 French Open semifinals however had suffered the sudden demise of her father at 52 earlier than that U.S. Open.
By 2021, she had misplaced sufficient — just one match win in any of the majors — that she couldn’t imagine her standing within the fourth spherical right here. The slowing of the wind after the primary set had helped her unforced errors dip from 26 in that set to 10 and 4 within the two others. She was highly effective and masterful as she tried to “soak in every moment that I had” on her first Centre Court journey, together with the ending, of which she mentioned, “Especially after last year, I wouldn’t have pictured myself in this position.”
Her 12 months has been robust, and her successful streak has simply reached a hard-won three.
