Reigning French Open champion Iga Swiatek secured a dominant 6-2 6-2 victory over Belinda Bencic in the Adelaide International final to win her first hardcourt title.
The fifth-seeded Swiatek was absolutely superior in Saturday’s final — she faced no break points, made no double faults to Bencic’s 8, hit 22 winners to her opponent’s 9 and committed just 6 unforced errors to the second seed’s 16.
The 19-year-old Swiatek had never previously reached the quarterfinal stage of a hardcourt tournament, while this week she raced to the WTA 500 title without dropping a set in victories over qualifiers Madison Brengle and Maddison Inglis, Danielle Collins in the quarterfinals, Jil Teichmann in the semis and her seventh career Top 20 win in the final against Bencic.
🏆😊Four happy kids…
Thank you for sharing this journey with me. It definitely would be less fun without you.🏆😊Team. Dziękuję, że jesteście ze mną. Bez Was byłoby mi zdecydowanie mniej zabawnie.@Sierzputowsky@abramowiczd@MRyszczuk pic.twitter.com/H5GDdBq52h
— Iga Świątek (@iga_swiatek) February 27, 2021
En route to her second career title, Swiatek wore the Asics Spring Match Dress in smoke blue and matching Asics Gel Resolution 8 tennis shoes.
The Polish teenager will now rise to a career-high ranking of No.15.
Iga is a star to follow !…. wrong pic, though. She is with Asics, and said in her speech in Adelaide, she is happy to now have the security of sponsors.
Designers have to respect the demands of movement in the sport, and add grace, fluidity, originality and style, but above all, respect the top tennis players’ comfort and concentration (as well as that of the audience). Never should the player have to fidget and tug away at her clothes between points, when a gust blows in the stadium, or worse, when she is about to serve and really needs to focus. Asics made a beautiful light blue soft, flowing dress that Jen Brady and Iga Swiatek wore during the Australian Swing in early 2021. Both did extremely well, and got world publicity during the AO and Iga, in Adelaide as the winner. Both had great problems with the unsubtle, silly front split, that kept blowing the entire dress open to the navel and reduced them to tucking it inside their knickers ! How inelegant and distracting…and immensely undermining of the player and the spectators. You felt sorry for them. The plan with this design has not worked (yet). An intended sexy ‘peep’, became a disastrous fabric bundle tucked repeatedly into knickers to stop interfering with the player. This one needs to go back to the drawing board and a FULL rethink of that front side split. Nike has pulled this front split idea off better in previous years. Come on Asics, you can do better with such a lovely fabric !
Styleoverfads, thanks for the note, I’ve replaced the pic. I don’t have the latest photos of Iga, but I will have soon. I like this touch of purple around the neck, but you’re right, the slit should’ve been executed better.