No.8 seed Swiatek has notched nine straight victories on the grounds of Roland Garros, and her victory over World No.60 Peterson was one of her most emphatic yet as she booked a spot in the third round for the third straight season.
"From the beginning, I felt like I had a good day today since I woke up, so I knew that, you know, I'm going to be in the right mood," Swiatek said in her post-match press conference. "I just kept that."
"I did my routines before the match," Swiatek continued. "Then when I was on the court, I just felt the ball perfectly. I felt like I could do anything with it. So I'm pretty happy that I had this attitude right now."
Swiatek, who became the first-ever Polish Grand Slam singles champion last year in Paris, has now won eight straight matches on tour, having won her third career singles title in Rome in her most recent event.
Currently ranked at a career-high World No.9, Swiatek was in complete control of her first meeting with Peterson, winning 80 percent of her first-service points, and slamming 22 winners to the Swede's seven.
"Obviously the score says that it was pretty easy, and it wasn't, because [Peterson] was playing really nice balls with good rhythm," Swiatek said.
Peterson had a handful of chances on the Swiatek serve in the opening set, and the two-time WTA singles titlist got on the scoreboard at 5-0 by breaking Swiatek with a forehand winner, preventing a bagel. But that proved to be a minor blip for Swiatek as she broke straight back at love, clinching the one-set lead with a deft dropshot.
The dropshot continued to come into play during the second set as well, as Swiatek mixed that stroke even more frequently into her otherwise powerful array of groundstroke weaponry. Once again, Swiatek charged ahead 5-0, this time without even facing a break point in the set.
"I can actually confuse players with that [dropshot] because they are, like, backing up, because I play really strong topspin and really heavy balls," Swiatek said. "They are not staying close to the baseline. They're waiting for the ball to drop. I can use dropshots and surprise them because they are not ready to go forward."
At last, Peterson held serve for the very first time in the penultimate game of the match, once more putting a digit in her ledger. But that only delayed the inevitable as Swiatek charged to triple match point in the next game, then fired a forehand winner on her first chance to wrap up the win.
Swiatek will face a seeded player in the next round of her title defense when she takes on No.30 seed Anett Kontaveit of Estonia. Former Top 15 player Kontaveit had a similarly swift victory on Thursday as she breezed past French hope Kristina Mladenovic, 6-2, 6-0, in just 51 minutes.
Former Top 10 player and 2017 Roland Garros quarterfinalist Mladenovic was no match for Kontaveit on the day, as the Estonian hit 20 winners to Mladenovic's seven, and never had her serve broken.
Kontaveit does bring an eye-opening 2-0 head-to-head lead into her clash with Swiatek, including a close, gritty victory over the Pole in the round of 16 at last year's Australian Open.
wtatennis.com
Next one is going to be the first real test for Iga but if she plays as well as her first 2 matches, she will finally get her win over Kontaveit for sure. Should be a high quality match.
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