As rain disrupted play on the outside courts at Wimbledon on Tuesday, pushing matches back and causing many to be cancelled for the day, World No 1 Iga Swiatek successfully navigated her way past fellow Grand Slam champion Sofia Kenin under the comfort of the closed roof of No 1 Court. It was a solid start, and not an easy draw, and I am glad to have the chance to play here again. You can’t get slowly into a Grand Slam, you have to be ready straight away… on this surface it’s not about the result, but about the progress, and see if I can do better than last year.
Only once in her 21 previous Grand Slam appearances has Iga Swiatek perished in the 1st-round, and that was here at Wimbledon in 2019. This year, with no grass court matches to warm her up, the top seed extended her current run to 20 wins after having seen off the American former Australian Open champion, 6-3 6-4 in just 79 minutes.
“I guess it comes down more to the mental side, I would say,” she told reporters before Wimbledon began. “How you’re going to be able to adjust to this surface. The player that does it better is going to win.”
While the 23-year old Pole continues to say she is still learning to play on grass and is out of her comfort on the surface, Swiatek looked perfectly at ease against an opponent who had toppled crowd favourite Coco Gauff in the opening round here just 12 months ago.
Despite some jittery serving early on, with the first 4 games featuring 9 break points and both dropping their deliveries, it didn’t take long for Swiatek to find her range and her rhythm.
“It was a solid start, and not an easy draw, and I am glad to have the chance to play here again,” she said later. “You can’t get slowly into a Grand Slam, you have to be ready straight away… on this surface it’s not about the result, but about the progress, and see if I can do better than last year.”
While Swiatek’s best showing here was a run to the quarter-finals last year, she finished the clay court season riding high on a 19-match winning streak after destroying the opposition to win her 4th French Open title in 5 years.
Opting to give the grass court warm-up events a miss to rest up and take in Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert in Liverpool, a refreshed and focused Swiatek got on with the job in hand, dealing with being break point down in the opening game by firing down an un-returnable serve. She remained unfazed when she squandered 4 break point chances in the very next game, responding by converting the 5th with a thunderbolt of a backhand winner.
She took it in her stride when she was broken in the next game by immediately breaking Kenin again, this time to love for a 3-1 lead. After pocketing the opener, prompting Kenin to leave Centre Court to regroup in the break, Swiatek took advantage of the extra time and hit some practice serves.
She served particularly well, something the Pole has been working on, but also was helped by Kenin’s defiant decision to return her second offerings standing several feet inside the baseline, and she won 8 of her 15 second serves in that frame.
“That was also one of the goals, to sometimes win, kind of, by serving, and making pressure with that,” Swiatek said. “I managed to do that on other surfaces. Hopefully on this surface, it’s going to be also similar.
“Here it’s even more important to serve well the first serve. It seemed fine on practices, so I’m going to try it out on matches with some stress coming in and everything.
“Hopefully this progress that I’ve made is going to pay off.”
In the second set, an increasingly frustrated Kenin tried and failed to conjure the shots that had carried her all the way to the 2020 Australian Open title, and the American was powerless to stop Swiatek from chalking up her 20th successive win.
“Honestly, on this surface it’s not about the result for me, [but] about the progress,” Swiatek said in her on-court interview. “In terms of, if I’m doing things better than last year. I’m not really looking at numbers or statistics, just trying to be better every day.
“Obviously, I had a great beginning of the season so I feel, like, I can come here and, kind of, not worry about points or anything, yeah, just focus on what I want to focus on.”
Meanwhile, 2-time Wimbledon finalist Ons Jabeur, who was scheduled last on No 2 Court but moved to Court 14, blasted her way into the 2nd-round with a 55-minute, 6-3 6-1, demolition of Japan’s Moyuka Uchijima.
“I think every maybe Top 10 or Top 20 [player] knows that the first rounds are really tricky,” Jabeur said. “Everybody is here to win. You can have surprises a lot of times. For me, I try to use my experience and not let that pressure get in the way.”
The 22-year-old Uchijima has rapidly improved in 2024, winning 5 ITF Challenger titles already this year, and the Japanese has seen her ranking skyrocket from No 170 at the start of the year to her current career-high position of 68.
The Tunisian 10th seed, the runner-up for the last 2 years, made light work of her opponent, though, breaking her immediately to take a 3-0 lead, before each held their serve for the rest of the first set.
Jabeur then cranked up the power a notch in the second, while simultaneously shutting down the angles as she effectively snuffed out Uchijima’s game plan.
As the game drew to a close, the Japanese, making her first appearance in the main draw in south London, looked skyward a number of times in obvious frustration.
She fended off 3 match points, but finally caved in on the 4th, when another thumping forehand winner from Jabeur closed out the match.
In a steam-roller performance, Jabeur won every single one of her first-serve points, and fired in 21 winners to Uchijima’s 9.
Jabeur next meets American Robin Montgomery, ranked 161 in the world, who was a 6-4 6-4 winner over Australian Olivia Gadecki.
19-year old Montgomery, ranked 161 earned her first Grand Slam main-draw win by beating her fellow qualifier and is having a solid grass-court season, making the quarter-finals at WTA 250 ‘s-Hertogenbosch and WTA 125 Gaiba.
Two former World No 1s were also in action on Tuesday, Angelique Kerber and Caroline Wozniacki, who were returning to Wimbledon after respective long absences.
Kerber, the 2018 champion her, last played in 2022 before giving birth last year, while Wozniacki spent 5 years away from the All England Club after her January 2020 retirement.
Both drew in-form players, with Kerber edged out in a tight 2-setter, 7-5 6-3, by the in-form Yulia Putintseva from Kazakhstan, who won the title in Birmingham, and Wozniacki needing just 53 minutes to romp to a 6-2 6-0 win over American Alycia Parks, setting aside any doubts about her fitness level after the Dane was forced to retire against Emma Navarro in the quarter-finals of Bad Homburg just 6 days ago.
Putintseva and Kerber each won 3 straight games in the first set, the Kazakh racing out to a 3-0 lead, only for the German to peg her back to 3-3.
After winning back-to-back games to sneak the opener, Putintseva also won the last 3 games of the match.
