PARIS – The queen of Roland Garros was dethroned Thursday in the Olympic semifinals – by a different kind of queen.
Qinwen Zheng – or QUEEN-wen, as she enjoys being called around the WTA Tour – took out No. 1 Iga Swiatek, 6-2, 7-5, in a stunner that will give China a chance to win its first gold medal in tennis on Saturday.
Swiatek, a four-time French Open champion at this venue, hadn’t lost a match at Roland Garros since the 2021 quarterfinals. She came into the Olympics as a massive favorite, but perhaps felt a different kind of pressure trying to win gold for Poland, her home country.
Instead, she’ll have to settle at best for the bronze medal after a perplexing performance where her normally reliable baseline game produced a barrage of unforced errors.
After Zheng dominated the first set, Swiatek took a long bathroom break just as she did Wednesday after losing the second to American Danielle Collins. And just as she did the day before, Swiatek came out refocused and quickly shot out to a 4-0 lead.
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But Zheng, the No. 6 seed who broke out earlier this year by making the Australian Open final, did not give up on the set and manged to retrieve the two breaks to level things at 5-5. Swiatek then lost her serve with more uncharacteristic errors from the baseline, allowing Zheng an opportunity to close out the match.
After Zheng staved off a break point with a deft – and gutsy – drop shot, Swiatek sailed a routine backhand long for her 36th unforced error and then missed a return on match point as Zheng fell to the ground in celebration.
Zheng will play either Donna Vekic of Croatia or Anna-Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia for the gold medal.