World Tennis Continental Cup Round-Up: Iga Swiatek suffers upset defeat to Wang Xinyu as Team World take lead

With more matches to come later on Saturday morning, the first two saw Team World take the lead at the World Tennis Continental Cup headlined by a shock defeat for the former World No.1 Iga Swiatek in her second match.

Swiatek was superb yesterday taking down Elena Rybakina who many have quipped doesn't seem to try as much in exhibitions in comparison to her normal game play so in reality the level of the Pole is very much either amazing to start the year or is still a conundrum and is certainly the latter now.

Full of dropshots a plenty on Friday, she put on a show but it was her opponent who did so in front of her home crowd on Saturday as she sealed a 6-2, 6-3 win to put Team World in front in a day that was dominated by the home hopes as Flavio Cobolli was defeated by Zhang Zhizhen with the Italian losing out 7-6, 6-3. Zhang was previously ranked as high as World No.31.

He now cuts more of a forlorn figure at World No.415 but of course in reality has been ranked a lot higher so still very much has the game to take down the top names still even if injury has seemingly got the better of him.

But this put Team World back in the hunt with Bencic and Swiatek sweeping the singles yesterday to open proceedings but going into the mixed doubles later, it is a 4-2 lead for Team World.

For Swiatek against Wang, she won the opening game without dropping a point showing her skills early but Wang started to take the initiative. She played boldly and showed great efficiency. This resulted in two breaks of serve which the Pole was unable to respond to in kind. It lead to a convincing 6-2 opening set. Wang was impressive yesterday as a note against Belinda Bencic winning the opening set, losing the second and was way ahead in the tie-break.

But she was downed losing seven consecutive points so it can be said perhaps that she was after some kind of a bounceback win and got it in style against Swiatek. Unfortunately the second set for Swiatek began with another break point converted by Wang who was put in a great position. She did not drop her level and avoided mistakes.

Swiatek did not improve enough to threaten her opponent who has often found it difficult to get games off the Wimbledon champion no mind beat her as easily as she did on Saturday. She saved two match points but on the third attempt, she was defeated. Wang needed just one hour and 10 minutes to seal the win.

She ends a run of seven consecutive defeats while Swiatek will need to anchor the mixed doubles team alongside Valentin Vacherot against Andrey Rublev and Elena Rybakina. Vacherot faces Rublev later this morning. At the beginning of January, Swiatek will play in the United Cup ahead of the Australian Open so all roads will lead towards that. While disheartening, this loss of course is only in an exhibition.

But for Wang, it will give her supreme confidence on the other hand ending a run of seven losses in a row to Swiatek and in front of her home crowd like Zhizhen is very much the icing on the cake.