NO. 1 COURT, ALL ENGLAND CLUB — Iga Świątek extended the best grass-court form of her career by beating No. 19 seed Liudmila Samsonova 6-2, 7-5 Wednesday, to reach the Wimbledon semifinals for the first time.
Świątek, the No. 8 seed, who is sometimes simplified into a caricature of a clay specialist whose game doesn’t match up to grass, has dismantled that already unstable narrative the past fortnight. After not winning the French Open for the first time since 2021, the five-time Grand Slam champion had a bit more time to adjust to grass, and that’s been evident in her performances.
She has played with a clarity of purpose that’s often been missing at Wimbledon. Rather than overhitting in tight moments, Świątek has used the patience and variety that first took her to the top of the sport betwee 2020 and 2022, even when things haven’t gone her way. She kept her composure in the face of a late charge from Samsonova, securing the win with a beautifully guided forehand return winner. She celebrated with a jig along the Wimbledon turf, showing a lightness that belies her stressful past year, and moments later, Świątek said she had “goosebumps” in her on-court interview.
She had been largely in control during Wednesday’s quarterfinal, but things threatened to get away from her when Samsonova broke to get back on serve midway through the second set. Samsonova had upped her level after a disappointing first set and was committing a lot more to her shots. In many of her defeats over the past year, and certainly during her Wimbledon exit to Yulia Putintseva 12 months ago, Świątek has responded to momentum changes with aggressive tennis and unraveled in the process.
She was calmer here, playing with a more controlled aggression to immediately break back to lead 4-2.
Świątek had to raise her level again when Samsonova started nailing forehand winners and battled back to 4-4. The memory of her defeat to Putintseva, in which the Kazakh went on a tear that included one unforced error in 13 games, started bubbling up. Świątek roared in frustration when a mediocre backhand allowed Samsonova to guide a backhand winner up the line and hold for 5-5. She was then given a time violation.
It would have been easy for Świątek to lose her focus. But she held from 0-30 down, helped by a pair of forehand winners, and after holding for 6-5 pinched the set and the match with a 10th forehand winner. “Anytime the momentum changes, you just need to get back to work and do something better,” Świątek said in a news conference of her ability this tournament to cope when things start to go against her.
A longer lead-in to the grass-court season allowed Świątek to focus “on my movement and how I should stop before hitting the ball,” alongside her team.
“Also, just on fast hands because obviously it’s important here not to stop the movements, even though the ball sometimes is fast.” She added that the serve has been another area of focus, while Samsonova said that Świątek seemed more confident on the grass and said that there wasn’t a major difference between her level on it compared to clay.
Świątek’s fall from her long-held position as the dominant world No. 1 has been well documented. She hasn’t won a title in 13 months, and hadn’t reached a final in that period until doing so at the Wimbledon tune-up event in Bad Homburg, Germany. But she’s still the world No. 4, has reached the semifinals of all three Grand Slams this year, and has now picked up the second most ranking points of anyone in 2025.
Those results would be used as an illustration of excellence for just about any other player on tour. Someone as successful as Świątek is held to different standards, but the characterization of her past year as a catastrophe now feels as wide of the mark as the idea that she cannot play on grass.
Her run has been built on the fundamentals that made her near-unbeatable in 2022, the year of her only major title outside Paris, at the U.S. Open. She is using angles and spin more than brute power, and showing variety to go with the violence on her forehand. Her serve has also been much more reliable these past couple of weeks, with Świątek winning 52 per cent of second-serve points on Wednesday, compared to Samsonova’s 28 per cent.
All of this has taken Świątek to unchartered territory at the All England Club. Next up is a semifinal Thursday against either the unseeded Belinda Bencic, who defeated Mirra Andreeva in straight sets in their quarterfinal.
(Photo: PA via Getty Images)