Iga Swiatek her more problems than Marketa Vondrousova to book her place in the quarter-final of the Cincinnati Masters, so let's see how it might go.
Iga Swiatek has been a pretty dominant player on hard courts on the WTA Tour for a while now. Her level is more shaky overall this year, with a few surprising losses sprinkled in between the several trophies, but she's still the number one.
Swiatek demonstrated how quickly she can flip a switch with her comeback win over Qinwen Zhang. The Chinese player did well to take the opening set, but things quickly turned around in the next two. Only two games for Zheng as the Polish player punched in a victory 3-6 6-1 6-1.
Her opponent in the next round will be Marketa Vondrousova, who had no issues in beating Sloane Stephens. Vondrousova had plenty of issues in the two matches she played against Swiatek losing both.
Swiatek has won both matches they played so far. Both happened on clay, and while Vondrousova likes clay the most out of any surface, she's never been as dominant on it as Swiatek has. Both matches happened years ago (2020), so a lot has changed since then.
For example, Swiatek is now world number one, and Marketa Vondrousova is a Grand Slam champion. Both are playing in pretty good shape right now, but this will be very tricky for the Czech player. Swiatek has all the power in the world, and while Marketa absorbs that well and can counter-punch like some of the best, she will struggle to hit through Swiatek.
Her best bet is probably to try and bait many errors out of Swiatek, but she'll need to move around well to catch all the balls coming her way. I think she won't be able to, and I expect Swiatek to win this one as well.
Prediction: Iga Swiatek to win in three sets.