Karolina Muchova will battle Iga Swiatek later today in the Roland Garros (French Open final) and the Eurosports analyst panel thing there is a chance for her.
Iga Swiatek has been utterly dominant at last year's and this year's Roland Garros. Pretty much nobody came close to beating her even though a few players made it interesting. Muchova will be one to give everything she's got but the question remains whether it will be enough. The blueprint she used to beat Sabalenka is effective against Swiatek too so according to the analysts there is a chance.
Former player and noted analyst Mats Wilander broke down the matchup from Muchova's POV:
"There is a chance for Muchova. You have to throw Iga off her rhythm. I don’t know if she can do it with power like Elena Rybakina can, but she can do it with other shot selections. We’ve seen her lose to certain players, and when you see players like her lose, other players start to think they can beat her too. That’s a different story to last year, where there was no chance of beating Iga. This year, there’s a big difference."
Schett added:
"If I was Muchova, I would watch the matches Iga played against Barty because she had heaps of problems against her, and how did she play? Using the slice, a big forehand, and a big serve."
Another former player and prominent analyst Alex Corretja added his thoughts:
"Muchova doesn’t need to switch it up too much, otherwise she’ll get confused. She can go from forehand to forehand, into Iga’s forehand, and from backhand to backhand she might need to play solidly. She could use open angles to see if Iga struggles. I would definitely attack Iga’s second serve, stepping in, moving and looking to push her as much as possible to make her uncomfortable. Or go to the body and start on the forehand side. Try to avoid the backhand from the beginning of the point."
He continued:
"You need to do something where Iga is uncomfortable. If she’s comfortable, she’s on autopilot, and there’s no chance of beating her. From what I saw of her against Beatriz Haddad Maia, she can be desperate at times, when the balls aren’t as fast as she’d like, and she can’t do as much as she’d like. She looks like she can get stressed out when she’s not winning points. I don’t think Karolina needs to go for much because otherwise she’ll make mistakes."