MELBOURNE, Australia — Iga Swiatek faced Emma Raducanu on Saturday in the only women’s singles match between two past Grand Slam champions in the third round of this year’s Australian Open.
If you thought that meant it would be close, you’d have been rather wrong.
Swiatek won 6-1, 6-0, a triumph that came to the 23-year-old from Poland with such ease, this is how she described it: “I felt like the ball is listening to me.”
Loud and clear. Asked to explain that sensation, Swiatek put her two index fingers a few inches apart and said: “It’s just being able to aim for this kind of space.”
And then she spread her palms more than a foot apart to show that’s the margin for error on other days.