Second-Ranked 24-Year-Old Starts Strong in Riyadh WTA Finals
Iga Swiatek smoothly dispatched the American seventh-ranked Madison Keys, taking just 61 minutes to secure an instructive win for the first group stage match on day one of the WTA Finals Riyadh, in Dubai. This is the first time Keys has made it to the WTA Finals since 2016, where she never made it past the group stages. Her Polish opponent has raised the championship trophy once before, in 2023. Swiatek has won the end-of-year finals tournament once before, in 2023, when it was held in Cancun, and a win like this puts her in a very favorable position early to exit the round robin stages. The two athletes last met in the Mutua Madrid Quarterfinals earlier in the year, where Swiatek posted a huge comeback to win 0-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Game Styles and Strategies
Swiatek has always been the picture of clinical, punishing precision, which hardly stutters, and today, it remained the same. The agility and snappiness in both her swings and steps make her a nightmare for all who face her, and rightfully so. Not many are able to both have and maintain such a standard, and it shows in the results. So while the Pole ran away 5-1 in the first set in record time, much like she has done in several matches before, and likely will in many others, it’s the simple fact that she is not needlessly wasteful, whether she plays at her most powerful or not.
Keys, who won the first Grand Slam of the year for a reason, has a dominating and powerful manner of play that is truly unanswerable. The American’s massive serves and forehand to match it, often the two going hand in hand in a combo, make it so that rallies are usually not happening frequently. She craves control of the court and point, and to do it with a frightening level of power that nobody can control, even her. It’s a high-risk, high-reward game that needs everything to work perfectly, which rarely happens, especially when Keys’ movement is not the most responsive on tour.
Why Swiatek Cruised Through
In the contest between the two, though perhaps it could be said Keys was not her best self, maybe adjusting to the size of the stage after not being here since 2016, it can be said that Swiatek won because they are opposite. The American lacked severely where Swiatek thrives in composure and being economical. The Pole didn’t make wild, frivolous errors, the type that have plagued Keys for her entire career. Keys never gave her a chance to do so, even. In the duration of a 61-minute match, the seventh-ranked player did not maintain enough meaningful rallies in succession to figure out the Swiatek. The few she did were offset by her own errors, disrupting any chance for rhythm or upward momentum.
Keys’ movement was heavy as well, not helping her in the slightest; balls were catching her at her feet right after she served, or she was stuck behind the baseline and not moving in to position herself better for shorter balls, which she consistently missed. In such a short match, the 2025 Australian Open Champion had 33 unforced errors and had her serve broken five times, when she served a total of seven times in the match. Double-faulting seven times no doubt contributed to that fate, and she could not match up these types of numbers against her Polish opponent, who only hit a mere 12 unforced errors, and saw her own serve broken once. Winners, which usually would be a part of Keys’ booming ensemble, when functioning, were painfully low, too low for the number of her flagrant errors, at eight. Swiatek hit a fairly modest number of winners as well, with nine, but the difference lies in that she’s not weighed down by point drainers.
Swiatek walked away with an amazing win over Keys at 6-1, 6-2. A beautiful score for the round-robin segment, where scores and games won/lost matter heavily. The head-to-head for the two ladies is now 6-2, with Swiatek leading the wins. The two each have two more matches to play against their other competitors left in the Serena Williams Group, named after Serena Williams, who won the end-of-year tournament five times in her legendary career. Swiatek will next face Ekaterina Rybakina of Kazakhstan and ranked sixth in the world, on Monday. Rybakina is fairly active, having won a WTA 500 title two weeks ago, and retired early in the Semifinals of Tokyo last week, citing an injury.
