Wimbledon 2023: Will Svitolina be able to force a fight on Shventek?

Athletistic/Tennis. July 11 in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon will play the Ukrainian Elina Svitolina and the first racket in the world Iga Shventek.

The Pole can now afford not to trade for mediocre tournaments, but to participate only in the most prestigious competitions: Grand Slam tournaments and Masters. Iga is still a long way from Serena Williams’ greatness, but the 22-year-old tennis player is taking confident steps in that direction. She is mentally stable, shows excellent tennis and already has a lot of experience under her belt.

However, even with such ideality, the Polish woman is not ideal. Belinda Bencic has only herself to blame for not winning the match in the previous round. The Swiss player didn’t convert three set points in the first game, and in the second game she lost two match points. If Elina manages to impose a fight and keep her diploma throughout the match, there will be chances.

In the updated WTA rankings, which are expected to be released after the end of the Wimbledon tournament, Svitolina will drop from the 76th row to the 39th row as she reached the quarter-finals. Elina continues to move up the leaderboard, updating her scores almost weekly. And most importantly: Svitolina is still not in top form, although mentally she seems much more stable. It seems that the birth of a child makes the tennis player more sober: before, she could collapse mentally in the middle of a match, when something went wrong. But now we don’t see it.

Wimbledon is one of only two Grand Slam tournaments that Schwentek has yet to win in his career. The current quarter-final for her is already the highest achievement of her career. In 2019, Iga stopped fighting in the first round, in 2021 she was out in the fourth round, and last year she covered her racket in the third round of the competition. This year, the Pole’s basic preparation for Wimbledon was the tournament in Bad Homburg, where she confidently overcame three stages of the competition and retired in the semifinals due to poisoning.

For Svitolina, this is the second grass-court tournament after a year-long hiatus. Elina is one of two unranked tennis players who reached the quarter-finals of this year’s tournament and is the lowest rated among the other participants.

A tough fight is coming. You can bet that at least 19 matches will be played.

Recall that in 2022, Wimbledon in women’s singles was won by the representative of Kazakhstan Elena Rybakina. Last season, Russian tennis players were suspended from competition.

Andrey Andreev, Sport.Ru