PARIS — Iga Swiatek saved a match point and grabbed the last five games to sneak past Naomi Osaka 7-6 (1), 1-6, 7-5 in the second round of the French Open on Wednesday night in a riveting contest between the current No. 1 and a former No. 1 who both own four Grand Slam titles.
For Swiatek, this extended her Roland Garros winning streak to 16 matches as she pursues a third consecutive trophy at the clay-court major tournament. For Osaka, who let a 5-2 lead in the concluding set slip away, this amounted to an announcement that she is still capable of elite tennis.
They went back-and-forth for more than 2 1/2 hours as rain loudly pelted the outside of the closed roof at Court Philippe Chatrier — showers forced the postponements of 23 singles matches until Thursday — and a riveted, if hardly full, crowd alternated their support between the two players. Sometimes, spectators called out before a point was done, prompting admonishment from chair umpire Aurélie Tourte.
Osaka served for the victory at 5-3 in the final set, and held a match point there, but she put a backhand into the net. Soon, when Osaka missed another backhand, this one long, Swiatek finally converted a break point on her 10th chance of that set, and they played on.
Maybe the lack of high-level matches caught up to Osaka, because she continued to fade, her mistakes mounting, including a double-fault to hand over another break that put Swiatek in control 6-5 before holding serve one last time to emerge with a difficult victory.
Osaka missed all of 2023 after the birth of her daughter and resumed playing in January of this year. She has won four Grand Slam titles (two Australian Opens and two U.S. Opens), with the last coming in 2021 in Melbourne.
Swiatek has been ranked No. 1 for nearly every week since April 2022.