Iga Swiatek advanced to the 2023 Madrid Open quarterfinals but she had to dig deep against Ekaterina Alexandrova.
The 16th-seeded Russian showed ahead of the match that she isn't afraid of the world no. 1 and that she's ready to fight for every point. It was already their third meeting on the WTA Tour and Alexandrova managed to trouble Swiatek in each of their meetings before, as she won the first match and took the Pole to three sets in their second match.
This time, she started in a best way possible to cause another upset, by breaking Swiatek's first service game. After four games played, Alexandrova was up 3-1 in the first set, but she would then see the brilliance of her opponent for the first time.
Swiatek, who recently revealed her ambition to study at university, won 12 of the following 14 points to break back and after adding another break in the tenth game, she gave her opponent no room to respond and won the first set 6-4 to secure the lead in the match.
The Pole started well in the second set, this time she was the one to break first. After some time, the world no. 1 was up already 5-2 and she was about to serve for the match.
But as Alexandrova hinted before the match, she wasn't going to give up. She broke back and despite facing a match point in the next game, she took her opponent into a tie-break.
In the tie-break, the Russian got her serve exactly when she needed it and that was the main difference. Thanks to that, Alexandrova was able to win the second-set tie-break 7-3 and take the match into a decider, already thirty minutes past midnight in Madrid.
But Swiatek wanted to show the crowd that stayed at the Manolo Santana Stadium that she's a fighter and she did exactly that. The young Pole was 100% on break points in the third set and since she didn't face any, nothing stopped her from winning the match 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-3 and booking her quarterfinal spot.
Among the last eight players, she will take on another seeded player, this time the 27th-seeded Petra Martic from Croatia, who defeated 2021 Roland Garros champion Barbora Krejcikova in the previous round.
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