Swiatek kicked off her campaign in the Caja Magica on Thursday with a win over young gun Alex Eala. It was a successful start to her title defence, despite being a very close three-set match (4-6, 6-4, 6-2). The battle lasted more than two hours.
The Filipina defeated the Pole just one month ago in Miami and she gave the world number two another stern examination today. This time around, Iga managed to respond in time to rescue a match that was getting away from her. Eala came flying out of the blocks. She was freewheeling with her forehand and caught her opponent off-guard a number of times with her pinpoint returns of serve. Alex was not in the mood to forgive her opponent’s mistakes, which were more frequent than normal. However, unlike in Miami, the defending champion managed to fight back. Patience, tactics and bags of experience were enough to get Iga over the line in one of her favourite playgrounds, the Manolo Santana Stadium.
Post-match, the Pole admitted that it had not been her best performance: “It was my first match here and it’s never easy to adjust to the altitude. As you know, it was much colder here during my first practice sessions. Yesterday it was hotter, but we only had one hour to do things, so it didn’t feel quite like it did in the match. The ball was coming off my racket out of control, so I increased the tension in the second set, then it was better. Even so, when you don’t start well sometimes it takes a while to find your game, but I did it so I’m happy”.
Given her performance, no sooner had the match finished than she decided to go and practice to get her feel back: “I felt like there were a few things I had to work on, and the best thing was to do it straight away, so that my body can remember the correct movements. We worked for 30 minutes on court, so I’m happy I had the chance to do it”. Her recipe for success; work, work and more work.
In round three, she will be hoping for the same result but a better performance when she crosses swords with Linda Noskova, who saw off Argentina’s Carle 7-5, 6-1.
