From Queen of Clay to fast-court champion: Iga Swiatek's serve delivers Cincinnati title

MASON, OH—“I’m always this kind of player who needs to see the proof,” Iga Swiatek said last week, when she was in the middle of her Cincinnati Open campaign. “If the serves are actually going to go in, I’ll be convinced.”

Swiatek was talking about the hopes and dreams that Wim Fissette, her coach, had for her serve when they began their partnership last fall. At first, his ambitions seemed a little far-fetched to her.

“When I started working with Wim, I didn’t believe that I can serve 185 [kilometers per hour] and 180 consistently. So I think he helped me with reaching this higher speed…I just kind of needed to believe it.”

There’s no way for Iga, or anyone else, to doubt her serving potential any longer. Especially not after her 7-5, 6-4 win over Jasmine Paolini in the final here on Monday evening. Time after time, often at the most opportune moments, Swiatek threw down serves in the 110- to 115-m.p.h. range. That’s right around the 185 k.p.h. mark that Fissette envisioned for her.

The result is that Swiatek has turned her career upside down in 2025. The decade’s greatest dirt-baller didn’t win anything during the clay swing, but since then she has turned around and claimed her first titles at two of the sport’s most important tournaments, Wimbledon, on grass, and Cincinnati, on quick hard courts. They’re two events that she may have doubted she would ever conquer. In the past, the slow-court-loving Swiatek couldn’t find her bearings on their slick surfaces.

After her performance on Monday, we may have to ask: Is the Queen of Clay turning into a big-serving fast-courter?

She hit eight aces and at least that many service winners against Paolini. Just as important was when she found them. Down 2-3 in the first set, she came up with two unreturnable serves to hold. Up 4-3, she fired two aces. And at 6-5, she closed the set with three service winners and an ace. There was more of the same in the second set. Serving at 4-3, in what turned out to be the most crucial game of the match, she fended off a break point with a service winner and held with an ace. And she ended the match in fitting fashion, with an ace out wide.

Yet Swiatek, ever the process-oriented perfectionist, wasn’t entirely thrilled with her serving night. And it’s true that she committed seven double faults, and made just 57 percent of her first serves.

“I couldn’t even toss well,” she told Tennis Channel with a laugh. “It was a love-hate relationship [with her serve] today.”

“At the end,” she finally had to allow, “the serve helped me.”

With any shot, there will be trade-offs between power and control. If you’re getting more free points with the serve, you may be willing to live with more double faults. With Swiatek, the more aggressive she has been with that shot, the more attack-minded she has been, and the more success she has had.

“Maybe I wasn’t committing to my serve for some part of the season,” she said of her early-2025 troubles.

Now, as the final Grand Slam of the year approaches, she’s fully committed to what she, Fissette, and her psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, have built. When the last point was over, Swiatek looked back at her team and pointed to her head. She was happy that she hadn’t gotten negative when the match tightened.

“I was focusing on the right things,” Swiatek said. “Maybe not everything was perfect. Mentally I was there to just play the best tennis that was possible at that moment.”

“Thank you for forcing me to become a better player,” Swiatek said to Fissette afterward. “And to learn how to play on these surfaces.”

Now she has all the proof she needs, in the form of the winner’s trophy, that his ambitions for her hadn’t been delusional after all.

With the title, Swiatek moves from No. 3 to No. 2 in the rankings, as well as in the seedings at the US Open—that means no potential semifinal with No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.

Speaking of Sabalenka, can we say that Swiatek has also overtaken her as the favorite at the Open, and the favorite to reclaim the year-end No. 1 ranking that she surrendered to her in 2024? In the past, the late-season schedule—which is hard courts only the rest of the way—might have made that a long shot. Now it might be exactly what she wants.