Iga Swiatek's serve deserts her in Italian Open upset against Danielle Collins
ROME — Iga Świątek's struggles continue, at one of the last places anyone in tennis would have expected. Świątek, a master of clay-court tennis and defending champion at the Italian Open, lost to American Danielle Collins in the second round, falling 6-1, 7-5.
Collins had beaten Świątek just once before in eight meetings, but on Saturday in the Campo Centrale of the Foro Italico, Collins looked like she'd had her opponents number for years.
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The head-to-head record aside, world No. 35 Collins represents the sort of player Świątek has been losing to all year, in places where she tends not to lose at all: big hitters capable of jumping on her increasingly vulnerable first serve, which deserted her entirely in the first set against the American. The pressure builds behind Świątek's first serve, then her second serve, and then the rest of her game, sending her back to old patterns of play that she is trying, she said in an interview with SportoweFakty ahead of this match, to eliminate from her tennis. Over-pressing on returns sends them long or into the net. Rally balls go awry.
Świątek had looked to be back to her old dominating ways during her first match in Rome against Elisabeth Cocciaretto, winning 6-1, 6-0. Collins, a former Australian Open finalist and the Miami champion last year, posed a different challenge.
It may not have helped that the two have a bit of a history. At the end of their last match, at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games last summer, Collins spoke to Świątek about her retiring with an abdominal injury in the third set.
Collins later said that she called Świątek's sympathy fake.
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'I told Iga she didn't have to be insincere about, you know, my injury,' Collins said in a news conference afterwards.
'There's a lot that happens on camera, and there are a lot of people with a ton of charisma and come out and are one way on camera and another way in the locker room. And I just haven't had the best experience, and I don't really feel like anybody needs to be insincere. They can be the way that they are. I can accept that, and I don't need that fakeness.'
A stunned Świątek said she had little clue why Collins might have gotten that sense, given their limited interactions.
In Italy, things started badly for Świątek and stayed that way for a while. Collins broke her serve three times in the first five games and then once more to win the first set. Świątek landed just 39 percent of her first serves in that set.
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She steadied herself in the second, even saving a match point by hammering a backhand cross court winner serving at 4-5. But before that, she failed to capitalize on break point opportunities and service breaks themselves. She broke Collins in the opening game, but gave it right back.
Collins got to 6-5 up, before earning three more match points when Świątek sent a backhand wide. The world No. 2, who will drop to at least world No. 4 when the WTA rankings update at the end of the tournament, saved one more match point, but could not escape the second.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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