Iga Swiatek has built a reputation for handing out bagels. She needed only 57 minutes for her 6-0, 6-0 victory over Amanda Anisimova in the 2025 Wimbledon final. Before that, no woman had won a Wimbledon final with a double bagel since 1911. So her opponents have long had a good idea of exactly what a bad day looks like against her. That’s why Friday’s quarterfinal in Beijing was so surprising when Swiatek fell to Elise Mertens 7-6(0), 6-3 in 1 hour and 50 minutes, and the scoreline of the first set effectively captured the shock.

The first set was played break-free, but the tiebreak was one-way traffic. Mertens won it 7-0, making her “the first player to claim a tiebreak to love against Swiatek at the WTA level,” per the WTA. The numbers for the rest of the game provided no respite as well.

Mertens won 33 of her 38 first-serve points, hitting 24 winners, and committed 11 unforced errors, while never facing a break point. Only one other player has done it in the main draw of a WTA event — excluding Grand Slams, team events and Olympics — against Swiatek, and that was Coco Gauff in Madrid in 2025. The head-to-head now reads 2-1, with Swiatek having won both of their previous encounters.

“Sometimes you just grow into a tournament,” Mertens said in the on-court interview. 

The 30-year-old Belgian has certainly done that in Beijing. She beat Jelena Ostapenko, Gauff and Swiatek in consecutive rounds, which makes three Grand Slam champions in a row. It is only the second time she has beaten multiple major winners at a single WTA event, after Doha in 2019, when she knocked out Angelique Kerber and Simona Halep. She now meets home favourite Zheng Qinwen in the semifinals, her first at WTA 1000 level since 2021.

Swiatek did find a late flicker of hope, reaching 0-30 in the final game, but Mertens won the last four points and closed out the match. That finish could encapsulate the day even more than any statistic, and it presents a much greater challenge for Swiatek than one poor match.

Swiatek’s WTA Finals charge takes a hit

The WTA Finals singles field goes to the top seven players in the Race, with a special provision for an eligible Grand Slam champion ranked between eighth and 20th. And Swiatek came into the China Open sitting 10th in the Race with 3,584 points. Getting to the quarter-finals earned her another 215, so she’s now on 3,799.

She had earlier spoken about having never been in such a position. After all, Swiatek won the WTA Finals back in 2023 and has made the field every year for the past five.

“But it doesn’t change the fact that it still feels pretty far as there are many tournaments where you can gain many points. I try to just take it step by step because if I’m focused only on the next match, this is where I perform my best. I’ve never been in this position, so for sure it’s another experience in my career,” she said last week.

Following Swiatek’s Beijing defeat, Mirra Andreeva and Linda Noskova clinched WTA Finals Indian Wells berths, joining Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka in the draw. Meanwhile, Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff occupy the third and fifth spots respectively in the Singles Race standings.

Elina Svitolina and Karolina Muchova are right after them. And Swiatek trails Svitolina by 1,225 points and Muchova by 816. She’s also 111 points behind Marta Kostyuk in ninth, who skipped Beijing altogether.

Clearly, the road ahead is a difficult one for Swiatek.