In shock loss to Linda Noskova, Iga Swiatek felt she was facing Sabalenka or Rybakina

What does it mean when we say a player has “tennis DNA”? If you’ve watched the sport long enough, you know it when you see it.

On an obvious level, it’s the ability to hit with effortless power, carve out a delicate drop shot, land a topspin lob on the baseline, and rifle a tweener. But it’s not just that. Good tennis genes can show up in subtler, less-spectacular ways. Such as knowing how and when to change speeds from shot to shot, without looking like you’re changing speeds from shot to shot. Or recognizing, instinctively, what your opponent will do next, and then holding your ground and creating a better response out of thin air. Or measuring your first passing shot so it just clears the net, and juicing the second one for a winner.

Linda Noskova, who did all of those things in her 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 upset win over Iga Swiatek on Saturday at the Australian Open, has tennis DNA. Few fans were probably aware of that before last night. Noskova is 19, she’s ranked 50th, and she hadn’t made it past the second round at a major before. Her claim to tennis fame was the 2021 Roland Garros girls’ title.

There’s a lot of tennis DNA in the Czech Republic, of course, particularly among the women. It goes back at least as far as net-rushing artists like Martina Navratilova and Hana Mandlikova, and continues today in the all-court games of Karolina Muchova and Barbora Krejcikova.

Noskova’s skills aren’t as eye-catching. At first, at 5'11", with a strong build, big serve, and hard ground strokes, she can look like any other power-baseliner. And she more than held her own with Swiatek in that department. She hit 10 aces to Swiatek’s four, and 35 winners to the Pole’s 34. As Noskova says, "Obviously my game is to be aggressive almost all the time, especially at the right times.”

I just know that when I'm going to be aggressive, I can play with anyone. Linda Noskova

But she also won with her court sense. She read Swiatek’s approaches. She surprised her by suddenly shifting from safe rally balls to go-for-broke forehands. She absorbed Swiatek’s pace and turned it back on her. Just as important, even after losing the first to the WTA’s No. 1, she never looked as if she was just playing for a moral victory or a respectable score.

Down a break point at 3-3 in the second, with Swiatek surely thinking she was one swing from victory, Noskova surprised her by adding a couple of miles per hour to her second serve. She drew an error, and dug out the hold. Passing that test seemed to free Noakova up. In the next game, she broke Swiatek at love with a scintillating—and rare—inside-out forehand return winner.

For a lot of young players, that would have been enough for a night’s work in Laver, against this opponent. When Swiatek easily broke back to reach 2-2 in the third set, it looked like it might be. But again, Noskova played to win, and produced the superior tennis when she needed it. She broke at 3-3, fired two backhand winners to hold for 5-3, and came back from 0-30 down in the final game to hold for the win. Hitting an ace and a service winner on the last two points didn’t hurt.

“I mean, I just believed my game tonight,” said Noskova, who was making her debut in Rod Laver Arena. “I just really wanted this win because I didn’t really come to that court with the thought of, like, I have nothing to lose. I took it very seriously.”

“I just know that when I'm going to be aggressive, I can play with anyone.”

As for Swiatek, she couldn’t quite put a finger on what went wrong, except to say that Noskova took her chances better than she did.

“I felt like I had everything under control until she broke me in the second set,” said Swiatek. “But, yeah, well, I had couple of chances to break her in second set and I didn’t use them. So that’s a shame. But when she broke me, she was kind of proactive.”

The Pole, who had won her last 18 matches, compared Noskova's serve style to that of Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina. (Video above.)

“It was tough to read her serve,” said Swiatek. “I know I did everything I could, and I have kind of no regrets, but for sure I wish I could have played a little it better.”

Swiatek’s loss, coupled with Rybakina’s earlier in the week, blows the last hinge off the door in the top half of the women’s draw. The four fourth-round matches there will be Noskova vs. Elina Svitolina, Victoria Azarenka vs. Dayana Yastremska, Jasmine Paolini vs. Anna Kalinskaya, and Qinwen Zheng vs. Oceane Dodin. One of them will play in the Australian Open final next Saturday.

Zheng is the highest seed left at No. 12, and four of the eight—Noskova, Dodin, Kalinskaya and Yastremska—are outside the Top 40. Only Azarenka has been to a Slam final before.

As always when there’s seed carnage at the majors, we lose star power the rest of the way. But we get something in return: Every match becomes that much more intense and high-stakes, because everyone left has a legitimate chance to be a Slam finalist.

That includes Noskova, who showed she has the shots, and the tennis genes, to beat anyone.