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It’s a shame to be surrounded by “bagels” at a tennis match.
Not winning a game means a mismatch and one of the players is either out of their depth or having a bad day on the field.
Bagels — games that end 6-0, as they’re known, because zero looks like one — are viewed as an embarrassment, largely because they’re so rare. According to Opta, 12% of matches on the WTA Tour in 2023 will include bagels.
However, in just five years of touring, world number one Iga Swiatek has shattered that orthodoxy.
During 2023, Swiatek won the bagel in 29% of his contests. That’s almost a third. She has eaten a total of 23 bagels this year, 15 more than the next-most bagels on the women’s tour, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula. All 8. Excluding matches played by Swiatek, the average number of bagel matches on the WTA Tour last year was just 11.4%, according to Opta.
Throughout Swiatek’s WTA career, an average of 40.6% of her matches have been 6-0 or 6-1.
Swiatek showed no mercy when crushing his opponents (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)
Nearly half of her matches on tour feature bagels or breadsticks — and you can see why the term “Iga bakery” has entered tennis parlance.
Coming into the French Open, Swiatek is a three-time champion and winner of the past two tournaments, and she shows no signs of slowing down. Swiatek won the most bagel sets on the WTA Tour in 2024 (eight), ahead of Gauff (seven) and Aryna Sabalenka (five).
In her last two fights – winning titles in Madrid and Rome – Swiatek has launched three sets of bagels. and as Competitor Figures last month showed she eats as many bagels a week as the world number one, behind only 18-time Grand Slam champion Chris Evert.
But how did she do it? Use Hawkeye’s data and talk to the players who have to face her every week, including world No. 3 Gauff, world No. 4 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, and players including Victoria Azar From Grand Slam winners including Lenka and Markta Vondrousova, here are the main ingredients at Iga Bakery.
deeper
Iga Swiatek’s 100th consecutive week at No. 1: Streaks, grand slams, bagels
To win the bagel match regularly, you have to be consistent in all areas, especially good enough on return, so that every match is about who is the better tennis player, not the better server.
Swiatek is a master at this, which is why she’s so good at running with a trap.
“There are no holes in her game,” said world No. 11 Daria Kasatkina, who has lost her past five meetings with Swiatek in straight sets. This includes a 6-3, 6-0 victory in Doha, Qatar two years ago.
“In tennis in general, it’s very important. She’s coming back very well, and although there are some problems with her serve sometimes, she’s generally very stable in all aspects. She can switch from defense to offense very quickly. So to me, that’s one of her weapons. And mentally, she’s very strong.
Swiatek has won 21 titles at the age of 22, including four Grand Slams (Michael Owens/Getty Images)
World No. 6 Vondrousova, the defending Wimbledon champion, has played three times against Swiatek but has yet to win a set and has only managed a bagel and two breadsticks. “If she’s on fire, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no worse side of her to try and hit,” Vondrousova said.
Swiatek has been world No. 1 for 100 weeks, and her fundamentals are clearly excellent – even in several sets, she hasn’t won a love or a single match. But did she do anything particularly different when escaping?
Using Eagle Eye data, Competitor Swiatek’s plates have been divided into bagels and 6-2 or closer plates.
Of her bagel mix, Swiatek generated more unreturned servings: 31% versus 27%. As a result, her serve was 17 seconds faster on average; at the same time, her return speed was 16 seconds faster.
This supports the results of the eye test. Watching Swiatek put another bagel in the oven, it felt like things were quickly losing control of her opponent. This can be demonstrated by returning the average length of the game, which is 3 minutes and 18 seconds if it is the first game in the Bagel series; four minutes and forty-eight seconds if it is the third game; and four minutes and forty-eight seconds if it is the sixth game. , then it is three minutes and three seconds.
At this point, whoever Swiatek was present seemed to be thinking, “Please, make it stop,” and was almost happy to leave the court. In the sixth set of the bagel bracket, Swiatek returned the ball an average of four miles per hour faster than she did in the first set, reflecting a higher level of aggression as she headed toward the finish line.
Overall, Swiatek performed much better in games that were won 6-0 than in games that were 6-2 or closer. The former has a first-serve return rate of 88% and a second-serve return rate of 92%, while the latter has a return rate of 79% and 84%.
Swiatek is a master of playing lead vocals (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
In addition to getting more balls, she also came back more aggressively in the bagel division. Her first serve return is hit closer to the baseline (12.2m compared to 12.4m from the net), and her first serve return has a lower net clearance (87cm compared to 92cm).
Individually these are small numbers, but together they are enough for Swiatek to stifle his opponent’s game.
“From the first ball, I thought her depth was really good,” world No. 16 Madison Keys said of the first meeting. -1 and 6-3 loss to Switak. “She makes you feel like you can never put your foot on the gas. Then, all of a sudden, you’re off baseline, and that’s not a situation you want to be in.
“She puts you in a sticky situation because you feel like you have to do something you don’t want to do, and then you’re threading the needle between doing something that might be stupid but feels like it’s the only thing you can do. Do.
Players don’t just have to fight to stay with her – she takes away their chance to play.
When Swiatek rolls, she becomes calmer.
Facing a tumbling Swiatek can be disorienting (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Break point conversion rate in the bagel set rose to 67.9% from 54.7% in close matches, and she converted 31.5% of her break point conversions with winners compared to 26.1%. Overall, Swiatek’s percentage of points won in the bagel division increased (from 26.1% to 28.9%), as did the percentage of points earned due to forced errors (up from 17.2% to 18.5%).
As Case explained, many forced turnovers come from players feeling like they have to do more than they’re truly comfortable with.
What’s striking about all of these data points is that Swiatek’s batting hasn’t changed that much.
Her average forehand speed is the same (75 mph), as is her average backhand speed (70 mph). In the bagel set, spin rates were slightly higher for both the forehand (2476rpm compared to 2416) and backhand (1965rpm compared to 1901), but not by much. The average net clearance on her wings is also similar.
This shows that Swiatek’s moves in the game are not only about technique, but also about power and fluidity. Once she wins a few games, dominance becomes self-fulfilling, and both she and her opponent feel like they know what’s coming next, so where points begin and end becomes more inevitable; what happens in between matters less.
Furthermore, Swiatek isn’t a player who enters tournaments with ease – she often scores big wins early on, even though they’re theoretically against weaker opponents, but still sends a message to her opponents to keep her in the game. It becomes even more ominous in a tie.
Swiatek’s revamped serve makes her more of a threat (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Swiatek’s former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka, who lost 6-4, 6-0 when they last met two years ago, said it was “real” that Swiatek was able to keep getting good results week after week. Unbelievable”: “It’s just amazing. “Honestly, within five seconds of being number one, I really couldn’t wrap my head around it. “
“Her ability to hit one point at a time puts a lot of pressure on her opponent,” said two-time Australian Open champion Azarenka, who lost 6-4, 6-0 and 6-4, 6-1. Australian Open Tennis. “Not many people can figure it out.”
Keys, who has beaten Swiatek before but added to her latest loss with a 6-1, 6-0 defeat, agreed: “Her intensity is basically unmatched by anyone else. . She’s paying attention to you at every turn.
Sofia Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion, described her as “super intense” after losing 6-4, 6-1 to Swiatek in that year’s French Open final. Four years ago at Roland Garros, Swiatek won breadsticks in six of seven starts.
Swiatek beats Kenin for her first Grand Slam title (Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Images)
This psychological torture did not stop with their demise.
Swiatek’s opponents—and potential opponents in the drawing process—find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle: The more bagels she wins, the more scared they become and the more likely they are to win.
Players must actively try to stop this reputation she has as they prepare to face her.
“I think if you start thinking, ‘Ah, maybe I’ll get a 6-0’ from Iga, then you might end up getting one,” said three-time Grand Slam finalist Ons Jabr. Jabeur ), who has lost the most games of the pair. Competitor this week. “Getting that kind of karma.
“The most important thing is not to think like that. She is a fantastic player, but you should always think about yourself and not get into that mentality.
Swiatek’s ruthlessness creates an aura that is sometimes difficult for her opponents to deal with (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
This is easier said than done.
Her opponents struggle to control their mental state, but Swiatek is a master at diagnosing it from the other side of the court, learning from it, and treating their minds like their bodies. She’s an elite problem solver and was a gifted mathematician in school; once she figures out a player, there’s not much they can do.
Gauff, who has lost 10 of 11 meetings with Swiatek (including a 6-1, 6-3 loss in the French Open final two years ago) and has been beaten by her three times, agreed: ” When you play against her you shouldn’t worry about the results of the previous games because every day is a new game and a new opportunity and I think if you play against her thinking about her results then you probably (have). Lost the game.
“I approach every game from scratch. I think it’s even more important when you’re playing against people who have done well in the past because you don’t want that to affect the way you play.
How difficult is this to do?
“For me, it’s not that hard,” Goff said, “just because I feel like in the past, as my career has gone on, I’ve played a lot of big-name players early on. I think I’m just used to separating the name from the game. . So for me, it’s not that difficult. Obviously, it’s difficult to play Iga herself, but I think that doesn’t affect me when I play her.
Rybakina, who won 4-2 against Swiatek, said the key was to focus on every point: “You have to keep saying to yourself what you have to do.”
To try and crack the code, we turned to Jelena Ostapenko – the all-or-nothing Latvian who has a stunning 4-0 record against Swiatek. How does she not only avoid being besieged by Swiatek, but find a way to defeat her every time?
“This is my top secret,” Ostapenko replied with a smile. “I won’t say anything.”
Okay, but how hard is it to live with her when she starts living? “This is my secret,” she repeated.
Time to put away the bagel slicer.
Even if Ostapenko does spill her secrets, knowing how to stop Swiatek is one thing; succeeding under pressure is another.
As this year’s French Open moves to Paris, Iga’s Bakery has also arrived in the world capital of Vienna to open its doors.
(Top: Patrick Smith; Clive Brunskill/Getty Images; Design: John Bradford)
