2024 WTA Finals: Day 4 Analysis
Featured match: Swiatek vs Gauff
Featured Match — Day 4
#2 Iga Swiatek vs #3 Coco Gauff
H-2-H: Swiatek led 11-1
Last meeting: Swiatek 6-2 6-4 — 2024 Roland Garros SF, clay
Coco Gauff won the forehand battle and with it claimed a second career win over Iga Swiatek. Because the American secured a 6-3, 6-4 triumph, she also sealed a spot in the Riyadh semi-finals.
Afterwards, Gauff said she “decided to adapt her forehand during the match to reduce her errors and had to be resilient”.
The 20-year old finished with 26 forehand errors while Swiatek slumped to 40 missed forehands. A 14-point difference in a match that had Gauff winning 15 more points (79 to 64).
Their 13th meeting was messy. Both players made 3-times more unforced errors than winners, so they weren’t exactly close to their best. Regardless of that, Gauff proved stronger on the day and was happy to finally beat Swiatek again.
Winners & Unforced Errors
Swiatek: 15 winners / 44 unforced errors
Gauff: 10 winners / 34 unforced errors
In the first set, Gauff outplayed Swiatek. Helped by a 25-19 edge in baseline duels, the American created break chances in 4 of 5 return games while not allowing a single break point on her own serve.
The second set was different as Gauff began with 6 double faults across her first 2 serve games. This shook her confidence, which in turn led to a decrease in the speed of her groundstrokes.
It gave Swiatek the opportunity to be more imposing and aggressive. The defending champion managed to go a break up twice, but paramount to her current rustiness and struggles, she immediately lost her advantage both times.
There were simply too many uncharacteristic errors coming out of Swiatek’s racquet, even when she had time and her feet were set.