Iga Swiatek has made a name for herself by handing out bagels though it's not something she necessarily aims to do.
Swiatek is all about winning. The way she wins a match matters little to the Polish superstar but some of her wins can be brutal. She thrashed Karolina Pliskova in Rome 6-0 6-0 in the final which kind of started the legend of Iga's bakery.
She has been so dominant in the past two years that she's beating players 6-0 pretty regularly. Just recently at Roland Garros, Swiatek won four sets with the score 6-0. We saw that score in three consecutive matches in the opening three rounds which made her a bit uncomfortable.
Reporters obviously could smell the great story from miles away and they pressed her so much that she had to eventually justify why she won 6-0 6-0 against Xinyu Wang. Eventually, she shut down talk about it completely but the bagels are still a story. There is a reason for that; what she's been able to do hasn't been done in a while.
Back at the start of the new millennium, Martina Hingis proved an utterly dominant force in tennis. The Swiss player had at least fifteen 6-0 sets both in 2000 and 2001. It was a spectacular stat that showcased how dominant she was and until this year it wasn't replicated.
Enter Iga Swiatek and her bakery. The Polish player had 18 bagel sets on the Tour in 2022, 21 actually, including the Billie Jean King Cup. This year, Swiatek hit the magical number of 15 at the Bad Homburg Open with a win over Tatjana Maria. The final score of the match was 5-7 6-2 6-0 which was the 15th she needed to qualify for the milestone.
She became the first player since 2001 to have 15+ bagel sets in consecutive years. We're only still in June so there is a very good chance that she eclipses the 18 she had last year. She might even attack the record of Serena Williams who is the player with most bagel sets since 2000 (25 in 2013). Steffi Graff holds the overall record with 29 and 35 bagel sets respectively in 1988 and 1989.
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