It has been quite an eventful few months for Iga Swiatek. While she changed her coaching staff, the Pole arrived in Riyadh as the defending champion of the WTA Finals and wanted to reclaim the top spot in the WTA rankings from Aryna Sabalenka. While the latter hasn’t transpired, Swiatek faces an anxious wait to see if she will progress to the semifinals of the tournament. Earlier today, she won her final group stage game but was taken by surprise after a journalist downplayed her victory.

Swiatek faced Daria Kasatkina, who replaced the injured Jessica Pegula earlier today. Despite Swiatek winning the match comfortably 6-1, 6-0, her win didn’t have any bearing on her semifinal hopes, which all depends on the match between Coco Gauff and Barbora Krejcikova. Interestingly, Swiatek wasn’t aware of this and was taken by surprise when a journalist informed her about this.

During the press conference after her win over Kasatkina, Swiatek was asked if she was aware of this situation. A surprised Swiatek reacted by saying, “You mean, it didn’t matter?” Further, the tennis star also enquired about the reason behind her win not mattering for her semifinal entry. The journalist said that the result of the other match between Gauff and Krejcikova mattered and not Swiatek’s outing to make it to the semifinals.

While Swiatek has 2 wins from 3 matches, Krejcikova won one match and lost one. As a result, if Coco Gauff defeats Krejcikova in the final group stage game, Swiatek will be all but confirmed to progress through to the semifinals.

Despite the victory not having any bearing on her semifinal hopes, Swiatek was proud of her comeback following the loss to Gauff. She sounded confident about her game going forward.

Iga Swiatek on putting on a solid display at the WTA Finals

The Pole took no time in dispatching the challenge of Kasatkina. Swiatek just lost 1 game en route to her straight-set victory and completely outplayed the Russian star. While Swiatek struggled with her serve and unforced errors during her loss against Gauff, she was proud to rectify them today.

Feeling proud of her performance, Swiatek said, “It was a pretty solid game. It was a good performance. I was hitting the ball really well and picking the right shorts to play faster.” Even Swiatek’s coach, Wim Fissette was proud of the display that she showed today. He revealed, “I think the perfect match from Iga today, and yeah, really happy to see her play this level. Again for me, it’s all pretty new so, I had 10 days in Warsaw before coming here then saw a tough match with Krejcikova, then a difficult match against Gauff, and now I saw the perfect match against Kasatkina, so I’m learning a lot.”

However, Swiatek has suffered a major blow despite her impressive performance today. Krejcikova defeated Gauff to pip Swiatek for a place in the WTA Finals last 4. With this, Swiatek’s season has come to a disappointing end and she would look to make amends at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals coming up in a few weeks.