No.7 Anett Kontaveit will put her win streak on the line against No.8 Iga Swiatek in Saturday's final at the Qatar TotalEnergies Open. Who will win?
The season’s first WTA 1000, the Qatar TotalEnergies Open, has more than lived up to its billing with a slew of terrific players dispatched to the sidelines in advance of Saturday’s final.
The last two standing: Anett Kontaveit and Iga Swiatek. The No.4-seeded Kontaveit defeated No.15 Jelena Ostapenko 6-1, 6-4 on Friday. Later, No.7 Swiatek handled No.6 Maria Sakkari 6-4, 6-3.
Swiatek’s continuing evolution could be seen in the tears she shed after ending a 0-for-3 career start against Sakkari.
“I don’t know how that happened,” the 20-year-old said in her on-court interview, voice quavering. “I’ve been doing so much work to play well in those matches like that. I’m so happy I made it through.”
This is a stellar matchup, featuring the WTA’s longest current win streak (nine straight matches by Kontaveit) and some big-tournament play from Swiatek – the only player to reach the semifinals at the two most important events of 2022 so far.
“We all tend to be scared of something – I’m not sure what,” Swiatek said. “We all want to win so bad, sometimes it’s really stressful. This whole tournament showed me that if I’m going to be fearless, I can play [as well as] I want.
“I think like most of the matches we played against each other were over two and one-half hours,” Swiatek said of Kontaveit. “Get some snacks, bring popcorn. I think it's going to be a nice match. Looking forward to it.”
So are we.
The Case for Kontaveit
The head-to-head suggests a tight match, Courtney, but I’ll take Kontaveit in this one. Going back to last summer, Kontaveit has the edge in sheer momentum.
Heading into their semifinal match, Kontaveit’s recent success was obscured by a blizzard of gaudy numbers compiled by Ostapenko. The 2017 French Open champion, in the midst of a career-best nine straight match wins, had beaten six different Grand Slam champions in a span of nine days. Ostapenko began the year with a 0-3 mark against top-10 players and now, in a dazzling 10-day run, she could make it 4-0 with a victory over Kontaveit.
But the early, aggressive ground strokes that had obliterated Barbora Krejcikova and Garbiñe Muguruza in the past two rounds (they won a total of six games in four sets), were missing against Kontaveit. Scrambling a bit, but defending brilliantly, Kontaveit forced Ostapenko to play a longer game. The result was 39 unforced errors – matching Ostapenko’s total of winners versus Muguruza.
In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been a great surprise. Ostapenko’s streak began after losing in the St. Petersburg semifinal – to Kontaveit. And while she was fortunate when her shot ticked the top of the net and dribbled over and in, narrowly averting a 5-all second set, Kontaveit was solid at the end, placing some exquisite second serves.
You want some flashy numbers? Kontaveit now has crafted nine consecutive wins and – wait for it – going back to the beginning of the 2021 season has more WTA victories, 60, than anyone; it isn’t really close because she’s six ahead of Ons Jabeur. You could win a few trivia points with that cold, hard fact.
Who has come further, faster than the 26-year-old Estonian? She was ranked No.30 last August and now she’ll make her Top 5 debut on Monday. In a decade as a professional, she had won only a single title before last year. Now, she’s eying her sixth tournament win in seven months. In 2021, Kontaveit scored 39 hard-court match wins – better than all of her WTA peers, No.1 Ash Barty included.
Here’s another fairly staggering statistic: Kontaveit has reached seven finals in the past dozen events she has played.
“I’m very happy that we managed to keep this consistent level up,” she said in her on-court interview after beating Ostapenko. “Really happy to be doing well at these big tournaments, playing against the best players in the world, having a good time on court and I think that’s the thing I’m most happy about.”
The head-to-head is 2-all and, admittedly, Swiatek won the past two, in the third round of last year’s majors in Paris and New York. But three of their 10 sets have been decided in tiebreakers and another three have seen a margin of two games.
It says here Kontaveit will find a way to win, just like she did against Ostapenko.
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