Zheng Qinwen overcame Olympic pressure to beat gold medal favorite Iga Swiatek
PARIS — Perhaps for some it is the strangeness of sleeping with a roommate in a spruced-up dorm room.
Maybe it’s the weight of a shirt with a country’s flag or crest on the sleeve or chest. Maybe it’s the thought of playing for a priceless medal of almost mythical significance, knowing that the chance won’t come for another four years, after working week after week for ranking points and trophies and prize money.
Be that as it may, every time an Olympic tennis tournament comes along, the game of tennis aligns itself with a set of behavioral norms that go off the rails. And so we end up with a string of Olympic gold medalists who have never won a major — or had never won one by the time they got their hands on one. Alexander Zverev; Belinda Bencic; Monica Puig; Andy Murray; Elena Dementieva; Nicolas Massu; Lindsay Davenport.
Thursday’s case in point was Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1, who has largely cemented her supremacy on the red clay of Roland Garros over the past four years. With four French Open titles to her credit, she had lost here just once since 2020 before meeting China’s Zheng Qinwen on Court Philippe-Chatrier on another sticky, sultry day in the French capital.
Swiatek’s status as the big favorite seemed to doom her (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)
Over the course of 90 minutes, a 1,149-day streak of 25 consecutive match wins and a 47-4 record in sets won evaporated as Swiatek transformed into the worst version of her tennis self, scattering balls across the clay, especially in the tight moments when she usually thrives. She lost 6-2, 7-5 to a player she had beaten six times in a row.
With that, Swiatek initially competed for bronze on Saturday, but then crossed the line.
With tears in her eyes and a face still red, matching the color of her Team Poland uniform, Swiatek burst into tears in front of the TV cameras an hour after the match. An hour later, she walked straight through the press room. She refused to talk about what had happened earlier in the afternoon.
“Sorry, next time,” she said.
She could have been talking to herself, after a string of defeats — hardly consecutive ones — that all seem cut from the same cloth. Plan A works until it doesn’t. The reaction to Plan A working is more like Plan A. The surging, spitting forehand she uses to destroy so many players has all the topspin she needs to play crouch, let-it-pass, let-them-peak tennis, but the barely credible success that simply mowing down opponents has brought her seems to be preventing Swiatek from changing into a less risky version of herself.
Only against Naomi Osaka, at Roland Garros this year, did she seem to find that her opponent, who has won four Grand Slam titles herself, was unable to draw the lines all evening.
Whether this defeat is serious enough to consider strategic changes, or whether it is rather due to the uniqueness of Olympic tennis and everything that goes with it, remains to be seen.
GO DEEPER
World No. 1 Swiatek knocked out of Wimbledon after defeat to Putintseva
Like many of the best tennis players, Swiatek is the height of a creature of habit, especially at major tournaments, where she seeks peace, quiet and silence daily. The din of the Olympic Village—even for athletes who aren’t staying there—the pomp and circumstance of the Opening Ceremonies, and the rules that require you to step into microphones for a cool-down and shower, rather than the reverse order of Grand Slam tournaments, all contribute to an exercise in disruption.
Then there’s the pressure to win a gold medal for a small country that comes to every Olympics with few chances to hang one around its neck. Swiatek burst into tears on court after losing to Spain’s Paula Badosa in the second round of the 2021 Tokyo Games, when the Pole had just one Grand Slam title to her name. That time, she had pulled herself together and quickly pulled some distance.
“We are people too,” she said.
“Competing at the highest level every week is not easy. Tennis is such a frustrating sport sometimes, but of course there is nothing to complain about.”
That is not the case on Thursday.
There was even speculation in the Polish press whether Swiatek’s father, who rowed for Poland in 1988, had put his daughter under unnecessary pressure to win the Olympic medal, especially gold, that eluded him. Danielle Collins, who had a brief chat with Swiatek at the net after their quarter-final on Wednesday night, even came in for some criticism.
Collins retired in that match trailing 4-1 in the third set, and subsequently accused Swiatek of being disingenuous when she expressed sympathy for her injury. It was unclear what Collins was justifying, whether she was simply still irritated by a lengthy toilet break Swiatek took during the match, or by her delaying Collins’ serve by holding her racket in the air, a move her opponents quickly tire of.
Collins, who galvanized herself with huge come-ons for much of the second set before going quiet in the third, knows the value of momentum and disruption better than most. Swiatek said she had no idea what the situation was about.
The exchange between Collins and Swiatek after the American retired was on the odd side (Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)
Collins’ attack came 24 hours after Emma Navarro, another American, hit Zheng at the net for reasons that remain unclear after Zheng defeated her in their three-set battle on Tuesday.
“I just told her I don’t respect her as a competitor,” Navarro said after the match. “I think she’s pretty ruthless. It creates a locker room where there’s not a lot of camaraderie, so it’s hard to face an opponent like that, who I really don’t respect.”
Navarro, it is worth noting, is not exactly the type of player who regularly criticizes colleagues. Shy and quiet, at least in public, are the adjectives that often accompany her.
“If she is not happy with my behavior, she can come and tell me,” Zheng said. “I want to correct it to become a better player and a better person.”
Zheng could not have behaved and performed much better against Swiatek on Thursday.
The sixth seed did the near-impossible by beating Swiatek at Roland Garros, becoming only the third player after Simona Halep and Maria Sakkari to do so in the previous five years. Zheng, who made her breakthrough in January when she cruised to the Australian Open final, came back from a 0-4 deficit in the second set after Swiatek began to spiral downhill.
Zheng put an end to that by taking a cue from Coco Gauff, who claimed her only victory over Swiatek last summer in Cincinnati by disrupting her with high forehands and then hitting well back the off-speed balls that Swiatek hit back.
Swiatek’s flood of mistakes also contributed to this.
Swiatek’s backhand was unusually unpredictable (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Even when she broke Zheng back to love from 1-2 down in the first set, Swiatek couldn’t maintain the shift in momentum. Zheng attacked her second serve throughout, allowing Swiatek to win just four of the 15 points behind her and double-faulting as the world No. 1 felt forced to play bigger.
“I am so happy to be able to make this story about Chinese tennis because I have always wanted to be one of the athletes who can win a medal for China,” Zheng said.
“Right now I’m one of them, but I know the fight is not over yet,” she added. “I’m really happy. But at the same time I want to say that I’m waiting for war, and of course I’ve already created a story — but I don’t want to stop here.”
Zheng is the first Chinese tennis player to compete for the Olympic gold medal (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)
Zheng had been relatively unimpressive since Australia, but not everyone was completely shocked by the result. Karolina Muchova, who reached the doubles semifinals with partner Linda Noskova, said Zheng had scared the living daylights out of her at a recent clay-court tournament in Palermo, Italy.
“I knew Iga would be a bit too heavy today,” Muchova said after her victory. Zheng also tested Swiatek in the terre battue in 2022, when she won the first set before severe menstrual cramps left her unable to move on court. “I can’t play my tennis, my stomach hurts too much,” Zheng, then ranked No. 74 in the world, said at the time.
Swiatek will now face either Croatia’s Donna Vekic or Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova in the bronze medal match, while Zheng will face the winner of their semi-final for Olympic gold.
Gauff, the second seed, had gone out earlier in the week, succumbing to a questionable decision by the chair umpire on a crucial point, as well as her usually steely emotions, perhaps another example of the pressure of the Olympics. Gauff was in tears on court over the decision, which cost her a crucial break of service in the second set, and screamed that she was being treated unfairly on Court Philippe-Chatrier for the second time in two months.
GO DEEPER
Explaining the tennis rule that ended Coco Gauff’s participation in the Olympics
It was a moment that did not suit Gauff.
“It’s every four years, so you feel more pressure,” said Jasmine Paolini, a finalist in the two most recent Grand Slams. “The losses here are harder to accept; for me it was hard to accept.”
The men have been closer to form this time around. Alcaraz and Djokovic are still alive, but Germany’s Alexander Zverev, the reigning gold medallist and French Open finalist in June, lost to Lorenzo Musetti, the rising Italian and Wimbledon semi-finalist. Musetti barely made it to Paris in time for his first match since losing the Umag Open final in Croatia on Saturday night, and has now played nine matches in nine days.
“Something unexpected,” Musetti said earlier in the week after that first victory.
With tennis and the Olympics, that’s almost always the case.
(Top photo: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)
