After defeating top-seeded Simona Halep in the French Open, Poland's Iga Swiatek said even she is surprised to have picked an impressive victory over the Roman tennis player.
Swiatek produced a scintillating performance to defeat Halep, 6-1, 6-2 in the tournament. The 54th-ranked Swiatek, a former Wimbledon junior champion and Roland-Garros junior doubles champion, fired 30 winners and won 81 percent of her first-serve points, wrapping up the win in just 68 minutes.
"I don't know what happened actually, I felt like I was playing perfectly, I was so focused the whole match, even I am surprised that I can to that," Roland Garros' official website quoted Swiatek as saying after the match.
Halep, who crushed Swiatek in a 45-minute rout in the French capital last year before falling to American teenager Amanda simova, was on a 17-match winning streak entering the contest on Sunday and has now suffered her earliest Roland-Garros exit since 2016.
Swiatek further stated: "I wasn't experienced at all then, that was my first match on a big stadium like that, so I was pretty stressed," Swiatek said of her fourth-round defeat to Halep last year."
"Since then, I've made huge progress because I've played a few big matches, against Simona, against Caroline Wozniacki and Naomi Osaka, and I think it helped me a lot and now I feel like I can handle the pressure," she added.
( With inputs from ANI )
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