1 win = 3 rounds as Swiatek benefits from withdrawal and advances to semifinals in Doha
WTA
Every professional athlete knows that success is a combination of incredible amount of hard work and a little bit of luck, and Iga Swiatek experienced that at the 2023 Qatar Open in Doha.
Sometimes, tennis players don't have enough of that luck, and sometimes, they have more than needed. Two years ago, Andrey Rublev didn't have to play a single match to get to the semi-finals of the 2021 Qatar Open in Doha.
Two years later, Iga Swiatek plays the same event in a WTA draw, and she needed only one match to reach the same stage. Both of these runs came thanks to some withdrawals and a bye in the first round.
Since the WTA World No. 1 from Poland is the first-seeded player in Doha, she awaited Danielle Collins in the second round and destroyed her 6-0, 6-1. After her match, she was happy about her win, especially since it further built her confidence.
"[I felt] pretty confident. I'm happy that I was kind of composed and from the beginning till the end pretty focused and disciplined with tactics. I didn't really let Danielle get into the rhythm. I wanted to be aggressive. I'm pretty happy that I did that well."
In the quarter-finals, Swiatek was supposed to take on Belinda Bencic, who came back from a set and two breaks down against Victoria Azarenka.
But the Swiss player played quite a lot of tennis recently, as she's the 2023 Abu Dhabi Open champion, and withdrew from her 2023 Qatar Open quarter-final match.
Therefore, Swiatek advanced directly to the semi-finals, while playing only one match. Up next, she will meet the fourth-seeded Coco Gauff or No. 8, Veronika Kudermetova.
More recently, Jannik Sinner experienced something similar, when he had a first-round bye in Montpellier, and his second-round opponent Marton Fucsovics withdrew from the tournament, sending the young Italian right into the quarter-finals of the tournament without having to leave his hotel room.
