Iga Swiatek won the Qatar Open last year, and she certainly had an amazing start this year, but will that continue against Ekaterina Alexandrova?
Last year’s Qatar Open was a superb event for the Polish player, who smashed everybody en route to the trophy, as she had also done the year before. She downplayed expectations about doing so again, but her impressive performance in the opening round certainly made more than a few people pause.
She’s just reached a level where a regular performance devastates solid players, which is far from the norm for women’s tennis. She won the event in 2022 and 2023, dropping only one set in all those matches.
That’s an incredible level from Swiatek in Doha. Her opponent will be Ekaterina Alexandrova, a very solid player who can do some damage but will find it really tough here.
Head-to-head:
In most of their matches, the problem for Alexandrova has been her inability to outplay Swiatek from the baseline. There is no other way to beat her; you have to outplay her from the baseline or make her uncomfortable so that she kind of beats herself.
The Russian once found success with the tactic, back in 2021, but the other two matches were losses. They were pretty close, though, as both went to three sets, but I don’t see it happening here.
| Iga Swiatek | Ekaterina Alexandrova | |
| 2 | H2H | 1 |
| 1 | Rank | 19 |
| 22 | Age | 29 |
| 7-1 | 2024 W/L | 6-4 |
| 288-67 | Career W/L | 399-242 |
There is just too much familiarity for Swiatek in Doha. She loves the conditions and the event, and her results have certainly backed that up. I wouldn’t expect her to beat Alexandrova 6-0, 6-1 because the Russian can create some pressure with her serve, but I wouldn’t be shocked by it either.
Anything but a convincing two-set win for Swiatek would be a major surprise.
