Paris: Iga Swiatek eliminated Coco Gauff 6-2, 6-4 in the French Open semifinals Thursday and stretched her winning streak at Roland Garros to 20 matches. The top-ranked Swiatek is trying to earn her fourth championship in five years in Paris and can become the first woman with three in a row here since Justine Henin from 2007-09. Swiatek improved to 11-1 overall against No.
3 seed Gauff, the reigning U.S. Open champion, and has defeated her at the clay-court Grand Slam tournament three years in a row, including in the 2022 final and last year’s quarterfinals.
In Saturday’s title match, Swiatek will face either unseeded 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva of Russia or No. 12 Jasmine Paolini of Italy. Swiatek, who turned 23 last week, is 4-0 in major finals so far and she has been at her dominant best for most of the past two weeks.
Putting aside a three-set, second-round victory over four-time major champion Naomi Osaka, when she was forced to save a match point, Swiatek has ceded a total of merely 17 games in her other five matches. Displaying her usual brand of powerful-but-clean groundstrokes, Swiatek needed only 10 winners to advance on Thursday, in part because she made only 14 unforced errors - while Gauff finished with 39. It did not take long for Swiatek to assert herself on a sunny afternoon in Court Philippe Chatrier, where several spectators waved red and white flags of her native Poland - even drawing an admonition from chair umpire Aurélie Tourte in the second set.
W.
