Iga Swiatek took Danielle Collins for the second time in two weeks, and she proved much more deadly this time, smacking her in two sets at the 2023 Cincinnati Masters.
The previous match they played was last week in Montreal, and it was a 3-set match that could have been a two-set match. Boosted by that experience, Swiatek approached this match much more seriously and proved far more clinical.
Cincinnati doesn't play exactly like Montreal but today was relatively warm, and the balls flew quickly. It gave the Polish player a chance to use her precision and shot-making in her favour against Collins who really wasn't playing a really good match.
Swiatek employed the exact blueprint as she did last week (attack the second serve) and was deadly with it. The main contributing factor to that was Collins serving rather poorly compared to last week, which gave Iga plenty of looks on the second serve.
She was ruthless, winning most of those points (20/24), and Collins could do nothing about it. She tried some things on return and had pretty good success breaking her opponent two times but winning a game on her serve proved impossible. It was her downfall ultimately, as she needed it.
Like most matches in Cincinnati, it was played at a quick pace as both players looked to keep the rallies short. We saw some great moments from both and also a lot of mistakes. Swiatek was obviously the far player which the score shows clearly.
The final score was 6-1 6-0 for the number one, hoping to keep that rank throughout this US Open stretch. Sabalenka is threatening, and with Swiatek defending 2,000 points in New York, it will be interesting. Focus is on Cincinnati for now and she'll face either Qinwen Zheng or Venus Williams in the next round.
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