Iga Świątek’s grip on Roland-Garros, four years and four titles deep, slipped away on the one afternoon she least wanted it to. On her 25th birthday, the four-time champion was beaten 7-5, 6-1 by No. 15 seed Marta Kostyuk on Court Philippe-Chatrier, a fourth-round defeat that ranks as the joint-worst result of her career in Paris and ends her reign over the surface she had made her own.
It is the earliest Świątek has fallen at the French Open since 2019, when she lost in the last 16 to Simona Halep on her main-draw debut — the year before the first of her titles. The Pole had reached the fourth round for eight straight years and never lost before the quarter-finals in that span. She arrived having won 28 of her previous 29 matches at the tournament. None of that history held against an opponent playing the best clay of her life.
The match. Kostyuk had failed to take a set off Świątek in three prior meetings, never winning more than two games in any of them. The most recent was two years ago, and by her own account she is not the same player. The contest turned on a single game: serving for the opening set at 5-4, Świątek was broken to love, and from there the Ukrainian took control. She closed out the set 7-5 and ran away with the second 6-1 as Świątek’s unforced errors mounted, the four-time champion pushed off the baseline and made to play points on Kostyuk’s terms across one hour and 40 minutes.
“I’m still in shock,” Kostyuk said afterward, reflecting on a first win over an opponent who had beaten her three times without dropping a set.
The streak. The victory extended Kostyuk’s unbeaten run on clay this season to 16 matches, a stretch that already includes titles in Rouen and Madrid plus a Billie Jean King Cup win. She is only the second woman since the inception of WTA rankings, after Justine Henin in 2005, to open a clay campaign with 16 straight wins. It was also her sixth top-10 win of the year. Now into her maiden Roland-Garros quarter-final — and only her second Grand Slam last-eight appearance, after the 2024 Australian Open — she has done it as the form player of the entire clay swing.
The fallout. Świątek’s exit guarantees a first-time women’s champion in Paris and leaves no former titleholder standing in either the men’s or women’s singles draws. It also caps a clay season in which she had not reached a final at any of her three lead-up events, a run of results that now reads less like a blip than a trend. The birthday backdrop only sharpened the disappointment for a player whose name had become synonymous with this fortnight.
Kostyuk next faces either seventh seed Elina Svitolina, her compatriot, or Swiss 11th seed Belinda Bencic for a place in the semi-finals. Whoever emerges, the draw she walks into is one stripped of its dominant figure — and one she has spent two months proving she belongs at the top of.
