In a fairly surprising turn of events, the women’s draw at the French Open has held up extremely well seeds wise. Six of the top eight and all of the top four are still in at the quarter finals stage with Iga Swiatek heading up the draw. She will play Marketa Vondrousova for a spot in the semi finals, where she will be hoping to play Coco Gauff once more.
Vondrousova is in the last eight for the third time in four attempts, dating back to her shock Wimbledon title. It has been a gift of a draw for the Czech but you can only beat what is put in front of you and she has done that fairly comfortably bar one match. The latest of her wins came against Olga Danilovic, whom she cruised past 6-4 6-2.
That win was a hard slog in comparison to Swiatek’s complete domination of Anastasia Potapova on Sunday. She dropped just 10 points OVERALL in a 6-0 6-0 win, her fifth since the start of 2021. It was also the shortest win of her career time wise with just 40 minutes needed to see off the Russian.
Swiatek has been making the most of her second chance after surviving Swiatek, playing great tennis since then. It doesn’t feel like Vondrousova has enough aggression to trouble the top seed right now, with her biggest threat to a threepeat definitely being whoever advances to the final from Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina. The Czech is a crafty player but Swiatek may deny her the opportunity to mix things up too much. The head-to-head is 3-0 in Iga’s favour, with all three matches seeing her run away with it in the second set. While the last two were close first sets, the one that was not was here in Paris in 2020.
Prediction – Iga Swiatek in straight sets
