Iga Swiatek extends dominance over Coco Gauff to reach French Open final

Iga Swiatek beat Coco Gauff in straight sets (6-2, 6-4) on Thursday to reach her fourth French Open final.

Gauff’s run through the French Open ended at an all-too familiar destination in the form of Swiatek, the world No 1 who each week gets a step closer to becoming the dominant player of the post-Serena Williams era of tennis, especially when it comes to the red clay of Roland Garros.

Swiatek, the 23-year-old from Poland, wasn’t spectacular, but she didn’t need to be. After 10 days of mostly solid tennis, Gauff’s tournament ended in a flurry of scorching winners and spraying errors, against a player who generally makes opponents pay for nearly every one.

This wasn’t the usual Swiatek demolition. She even had to work a little harder than when she came within a point of exiting the tournament, in the second round against Naomi Osaka. But when it was over the result was the same – this time with a more lopsided scoreline, on another day of frustration for Gauff in an increasingly lengthy string of them, against a player who may just doom her for the next decade. She had used Osaka’s tactics of rushing Swiatek and being aggressive above all else well, throwing the kitchen sink at her opponent because that was the only choice she had.

In some situations, it’s the sink that breaks.

After the match, Swiatek said that she had “adjusted better to the court” and the atmosphere, saying that against Osaka she “didn’t have time to get into it.

“The weather changed also, and that helped my game I feel,” she said.

When the new rankings come out on Monday, Swiatek will be in the top spot, and Gauff will be right behind her at No. 2 for the first time. Yet, with the win on Thursday, Swiatek expanded her career-long domination of Gauff to 11 wins in 12 matches. Gauff’s only triumph came in Cincinnati last August, in a tight, three-set match on a blazingly hot afternoon that had Gauff, a Floridian, who has relished hours of tennis in punishing heat all her life, in her happy place.

On Thursday though, Gauff was in Swiatek’s happy place, a court and a tournament where she has lost just once in four years, where she has won the title in three of those years, where she now has 20 consecutive wins.

After coming out shaky and letting Swiatek surge to the first set, Gauff appeared to get her teeth into the match midway through the second, nailing two lusty shots into the opposite postage stamp corners to break Swiatek’s serve for the first time. She used a dispute with umpire Aurelie Tourte, which left her in tears, to galvanise her. She waved her hand to the crowd, signaling for more noise, and she pumped her arms, urging herself to stay on top. She had done what she came to do, and now she needed to see it through for three more games.

She couldn’t.

Swiatek broke Gauff’s serve at the next two attempts, the second time without Gauff winning a point, to win four games in a row. At 3-5, Gauff saved two match points, to ask the question of the Pole’s serve one more time, asking her to do what she simply doesn’t do in this match-up, and err.

She would not.

After Gauff saved two match points, and a third on Swiatek’s serve, the fourth was too far — Swiatek sailing through the finish line in 97 minutes.

She will play Italian 12th seed Jasmine Paolini or unseeded Russian Mirra Andreeva in the final on Saturday.

(Mustafa Yalcin / Anadolu via Getty Images)