2022 Champ Iga Swiatek Out of Miami Open with Rib Injury

Iga Swiatek of Poland talks to the media after withdrawing from the tournament through injury during the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium on March 22, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Getty Images/AFP)
Iga Swiatek of Poland talks to the media after withdrawing from the tournament through injury during the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium on March 22, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Getty Images/AFP)
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2022 Champ Iga Swiatek Out of Miami Open with Rib Injury

Iga Swiatek of Poland talks to the media after withdrawing from the tournament through injury during the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium on March 22, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Getty Images/AFP)
Iga Swiatek of Poland talks to the media after withdrawing from the tournament through injury during the Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium on March 22, 2023 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Getty Images/AFP)

Defending champion Iga Swiatek pulled out of the Miami Open on Wednesday because of a rib injury.

The No. 1-ranked Swiatek was supposed to face Claire Liu in the second round on Thursday.

As a seeded player, three-time Grand Slam champion Swiatek received a first-round bye in the hard-court tournament that she won a year ago during a 37-match unbeaten run that was the longest in women's tennis in a quarter of a century.

Swiatek, a 21-year-old from Poland, said after a 6-2, 6-2 loss to eventual champion Elena Rybakina in the BNP Paribas Open semifinals Friday that her rib was bothering her.

“I still have to run some tests and see what’s going on. I don’t know yet,” Swiatek said Friday.

Instead of playing Swiatek, Liu will go up against 94th-ranked Julia Grabher, who lost in qualifying but now gets to move into the draw.

Liu advanced Tuesday when her first-round opponent, Katerina Siniakova, stopped playing in the second set because of a hurt wrist.



Swiatek is in Total Control during a 6-1, 6-0 Rout of Raducanu

18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa
18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa
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Swiatek is in Total Control during a 6-1, 6-0 Rout of Raducanu

18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa
18 January 2025, Australia, Melbourne: Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek celebrates her victory over Britain's Emma Raducanu during their women's singles third round match of the Australian Open tennis tournament at Melbourne Park. Photo: Joel Carrett/AAP/dpa

Everything came so easily for Iga Swiatek during a 6-1, 6-0 victory over Emma Raducanu on Saturday in the only Australian Open women's third-round match between two past Grand Slam champions — if you thought that meant it would be close, you'd have been rather wrong — that this was how she described it:
“I felt like the ball,” The Associated Press quoted Swiatek as saying, “is listening to me.”
Loud and clear. Asked to explain that sensation, Swiatek put her two index fingers a few inches apart and said, “It’s just being able to aim for this kind of space.” Then she spread her palms more than a foot apart to show that's the margin for error on other days.
The difference, she said, comes down to “being more precise and actually knowing where the ball is going to go, seeing the effects that you want it to.”
When the five-time major champion and former long-time No. 1-ranked woman — now No. 2, behind Aryna Sabalenka — is at the height of her powers, as she sure has seemed to be in Week 1 at Melbourne Park, it is hard for anyone to slow Swiatek down.
The heavy-spinning, high-bouncing forehands. The squeaky-sneaker scrambling to get to every shot. The terrific returning. And so on.
Against Raducanu, who won the 2021 US Open as a teenage qualifier, Swiatek played at a level she called “perfect.”
Indeed, Swiatek mounted a 24-9 edge in winners, made only 12 unforced errors — roughly half of Raducanu's 22 — and claimed 59 points to 29. That caused one spectator to yell out, “No mercy!” in the second set as Swiatek was reeling off the last 11 games after the match was tied at 1-all early with not a cloud in the sky and the temperature approaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit (above 25 Celsius).
“I think it was a little bit of her playing well, and me not playing so well,” Raducanu said. “That combination is probably not good.”
Swiatek, who agreed to accept a one-month suspension in a doping case late last year, owns four trophies from the French Open and one from the US Open. But she’s never been beyond the semifinals in Australia; she lost in that round to Danielle Collins in 2022.
A year ago, Swiatek was upset in the third round by teenager Linda Noskova.