"Iga Swiatek the clear favourite but still beatable" says Mats Wilander

| by Drew Tate

Iga Swiatek has won 28 matches in a row and that makes her the clear favourite for the French Open but Mats Wilander still believes she is beatable.

It's not really rocket science, every tennis player is beatable in the right circumstances but Mats Wilander believes it's the format that makes it so. The Swede believes that Swiatek would be very hard to beat if the matches were played in 5 sets because it's so hard to maintain a high level for such a long time. He explained:

“If it was five sets, I would say Iga Swiatek is always the big, big favourite because the level she would play at over five sets, she would always be the big favourite. Because it’s three sets, there are a lot of women that can come out and play unbelievably for 45 minutes to an hour and in that time they could leave Swiatek 6-3 or up a break and suddenly we now need a little bit of luck to turn the match around."

"Iga Swiatek against all" - Navratilova on upcoming Roland Garros
"Iga Swiatek against all" - Navratilova on upcoming Roland Garros

He continued:

“She’s the favourite for sure, but it’s much more difficult to consistently be the favourite over three sets. Iga still needs good starts in matches whereas Novak [Djokovic] does not need a good start in any match and after one, two hours, he will slowly become the favourite over a match that will last a minimum of three hours.“With Iga it could last one hour and she might not have found her form that day.”

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