“I always expect a tough fight against Iga. She’s a great player, has won a lot of slams and is so consistent,” Ostapenko said after her win at Arthur Ashe Stadium: “I knew I had to be aggressive and play my game, because she doesn’t like it.”
For Swiatek it was the fourth defeat in her fourth match against the Latvian, who attacked her with powerful play from the baseline.
The four-time Grand Slam winner from Warsaw missed the chance to win her second major title this year after Paris, where Ostapenko celebrated her only major triumph in 2017.
Now it gets the 26-year-old world number 21. in the quarterfinals with US hopeful Coco Gauff.
Ostapenko ends Swiatek’s 75-week run
Swiatek slips from the top of the world rankings due to the defeat next week and has to cede her place to Sabalenka.
This marks the end of an impressive run by the Pole. The 22-year-old sat on the throne of the WTA tour for 75 weeks – an experience she will never forget. “Of course it meant a lot to me,” she said after the match. “It was great.”
“On the other hand, these last few weeks have been quite exhausting,” Swiatek continued. “I still have to do what my team and all these great players like Roger or Novak or Rafa keep saying: you just have to focus on the tournaments, not the rankings.”
Becker on team sizes in the stars: “It would bother me”