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January 22, 2023,
The dominos are falling and, most important, falling American Jessica Pegula’s way.
Iga Swiatek is gone. In straight sets.
As reported by ESPN, “A 6-4, 6-4 loss to Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in the Australian Open’s fourth round Sunday made Swiatek wonder whether she needs to reassess her outlook.”
It is only one tournament. Though, compared to what she has recently accomplished, we can understand why she would see this loss as a major catastrophe.
She is currently ranked world No. 1 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).
She was the betting favorite to win this Grand Slam Down Under.
Iga is a three-time major singles champion, having won the French Open in 2020 and 2022 and the US Open in 2022. She is the first player representing Poland to win a major singles title. She has won a total of 11 WTA Tour-level titles.
2022 was an incredible year for Iga, by anyone’s standards.
It all appeared to come so effortlessly. Smoothly. In 2022 she won two Grand Slam trophies, eight titles overall, a 37-match winning streak, and seemed perched in concrete at the number one position.
Still is.
Coco Gauff went down.
The loss left her in tears.
As posted by CNN, “Coco Gauff broke down in tears after her straight sets defeat in the fourth round of the Australian Open on Sunday, while fellow American Jessica Pegula progressed to the quarterfinals. The 18-year-old Gauff lost 7-5 6-3 to Latvian Jelena Ostapenko on Margaret Court Arena and could not hide her disappointment when talking to reporters about the match afterwards.”
As much as Jessica Pegula was the shining star headed to the finish line, Coco was quietly making her way there as well.
Under the radar but with very high expectations.
For good reason.
Coco has a career-high ranking of world No. 4 in singles, reached on October 24, 2022, and world No. 1 in doubles, achieved on August 15, 2022.
Ms. Gauff won her first WTA Tour singles title at the 2019 Linz Open aged 15, making her the youngest singles title-holder on the Tour since 2004.
She has won three WTA Tour singles titles and six doubles titles – three partnering with Caty McNally and three with, drum roll please, Jessica Pegula.
We thought there was a possibility that Coco and Jessica would meet in a knock down drag out affair of symbolic tennis siblings.
Not to be.
Coco rose to prominence with a win over Venus Williams in the opening round of 2019 Wimbledon. Her greatest accomplishment on the hard courts was surging into the quarter finals of the 2022 US Open.
She’s only 18, so she has plenty of time to make her move, like Jessica, to get past the quarter finals of a Grand Slam on the hard courts.
Unfortunately for Coco, this won’t be the year.
Her fellow American Danielle Collins flamed out too.
We privately had high expectations of Danielle.
Hard hitting, yelling, screaming and major fist pumping, she pounded her way into the historic 2022 Australian Open finals against Ash Barty before the former champion defeated her, then retired from tennis.
A repeat performance would not be a surprise but Danielle does have a tendency to be inconsistent and unfortunately plagued with injuries.
Another fellow American, Madison Keys, has been slayed. Again.
If there was ever a player who keeps falling short of high expectations, it’s Madison.
Granted she has achieved much.
Madison has been ranked as high as world No. 7 by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), a ranking she first achieved in October 2016.
The American luminary has played in one Grand Slam tournament final at the 2017 US Open, competed at the 2016 WTA Finals, and was a semifinalist at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
She has won six WTA tournaments, five of which were at the Premier level, and she achieved her biggest title at the 2019 Cincinnati Open, a Premier 5 event.
What is missing from that resume?
A Grand Slam title.
She certainly is capable of it.
Madison is known for having a fast serve and one of the most powerful forehands in the game.
She has used her aggressive playing style to become one of the leaders of the next generation of American tennis alongside Sloane Stephens.
Sloane was her opponent in the 2017 US Open Finals.
Boy does that seem like a long time ago now.
Former US Open champion Sloane Stephens never really got started. Now she is gone too.
They’ve all been defeated and Jessica didn’t have to hit one volley to send them packing.
Jessica is sending a lot of other players packing on her own as she has blasted her way in the quarter finals of the Australian Open for the third time in a row.
Somehow though, this feels different.
She is playing more confidently and, to our recent posted concern, playing with more power.
We noted in her previous two matches Down Under, she hit no more than 3 aces.
Against Krejcikova, she didn’t hit any but won anyway.
As long as all roads lead to Rome, get there however you can.
She doesn’t have to serve a lot of aces as long as she can blast those ground strokes and blast them she did against the number 20th seed Barbora Krejcikova.
Ms. Krejčíková is a Czech professional tennis player who has a career-high singles ranking of world No. 2, achieved on February 28, 2022, and on 22 October 2018, she became world No. 1 in doubles.
Pretty substantial credentials.
Enough to slay some top players herself.
She slayed them all when she won the 2021 French Open singles title.
And now she is gone too.
By courtesy of Jessica.
Jessica is currently the number three player in the world and the highest ranked American.
This is her highest ranking to date.
This is her biggest opportunity to date.
Overall, she is a four-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist in singles, having reached this stage twice previously at the Australian Open, in 2021 and 2022, once at the 2022 French Open, and once at the 2022 US Open.
Here she is again.
In the quarter finals.
This time, will it be different? We hope so. We think so.
This is the best we have ever seen Jessica play.
The most humbly confident we have witnessed.
Sometimes there are teams of destiny.
In Jessica’s case, at the 2023 Australian Open, as so many dominoes have already fallen, hopefully she is a player of destiny.
If only this time, things will be different.
~ ~ ~
OPENING PHOTO Rena-Schild-Shutterstock-photo-credit Femcompetitor.com, grapplingstars.com, fciwomenswrestling.com, fcielitecompetitor.com, fciwomenswrestling2.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbora_Krej%C4%8D%C3%ADkov%C3%A1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iga_%C5%9Awi%C4%85tek
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/21/tennis/iga-swiatek-australian-open-eliminated-spt-intl-hnk/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_Gauff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Keys
https://www.fciwomenswrestling2.com
