No career Grand Slam this Australian Open for Iga Swiatek, who falls to Elena Rybakina

Iga Swiatek said there was no “breakthrough lesson” she would take away from her 7-5, 6-1 loss to Elena Rybakina in the Australian Open quarterfinals, but she went on to suggest a few takeaways from her defeat.

“There are some stuff on the serve I would like to change,” she began, while noting that unlike the service tweaks Carlos Alcaraz has seemingly seamlessly implemented into his game, such a change would take time.

The tennis calendar, relentless as Rybakina’s shotmaking Wednesday in Melbourne, doesn’t afford top players as much practice as they’d prefer.

“I think for sure we’ll skip some 1000 [level] tournaments,” said Swiatek, perhaps referencing February’s events in Doha and Dubai.

If nothing else, such a move would give Swiatek more time before facing Rybakina—who has now won two straight against Iga, after dropping her previous four. Three of the past four sets Rybakina has won over Swiatek have been by 6-0 or 6-1 scores.

Rybakina, now into her fourth Grand Slam semifinal (first since Wimbledon 2024), entered this match on a roll: she has now won 18 of her last 19 matches, and her last eight against the WTA Top 10 (Swiatek is 2-6 in her last eight).

The serve played an outsized part in the outcome. Rybakina won 79% of her first-serve points, and an excellent 17 of 30 second-serve points.

“In first set I think it was a difference of a couple points,” said Swiatek. “She also, I thought, gave me some chances on her serve, and sometimes I used them … You know, I wanted to be aggressive on the second serve, so sometimes, yeah, will make mistakes. But if you want to break, you need to make it in in the moment like that.”

Rybakina’s 26 winners forced the Pole to go for more, but she only scored 10 winners and struck 25 unforced errors.

“Then in the second set I thought, I don't know, that the pace from her got a little bit even higher, and she was more precise, and maybe I dropped the intensity at the beginning especially.”

Rybakina will face either Jessica Pegula or Amanda Anisimova in the final four; Swiatek sees her first chance at a career Grand Slam slip away.

“I'll just try another time, and hopefully with the experience and with another year of me playing and practicing, I'll be able to start next tournament, next Australian Open with some more skills or more variety or with the stuff that I wasn't able to completely work on,” said Swiatek. “Maybe I will have it next year.”