“I Was Struggling”: Belinda Bencic Opens Up on Her Loss at WTA Adelaide 2021 to Iga Swiatek

Published 02/27/2021, 8:53 AM EST

Sharing her thoughts on what turned out to be a lopsided WTA Adelaide final on Saturday, Swiss tennis star Belinda Bencic conceded that she lost to a much superior Iga Swiatek on the day.

The World Number 12 struggled to get a grip on the match as the reigning French Open champion put the squeeze on her serve and produced unstoppable winners at will to blaze away to her maiden Tour championship win.

In what was the first-ever meeting between the two stars, a hapless Bencic simply didn’t know what hit her as the Pole completed a 6-2, 6-2 rout in no time.

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Belinda Bencic reveals she felt “little bit off” in the final against Iga Swiatek

Speaking at the post-match press conference, Bencic, who went into the final in the hopes of landing her fifth career WTA crown, revealed that she “felt (a) little bit off” on the court and simply couldn’t stand up to the fusillade that the 18th-ranked Swiatek unleashed from her end of the turf.

Bencic: “Mentally, I felt like today I was not in the same state, kind of vision that I had yesterday. I felt little bit off.
"I was struggling with her game little bit. I never knew where she's going to play. She played, yeah, like it was overwhelming for me.”#AdelaideTennis
— WTA Insider (@WTA_insider) February 27, 2021

The 23-year-old added that she didn’t go into the game with the same state of mind as she’d done during her semifinal win over American teen star Coco Gauff on Friday.

She said that she also lacked the “vision” that had helped her come out on the finishing side of a bitterly fought three-setter against Gauff.

Belinda Bencic admits Iga Swiatek’s power-packed game was “overwhelming” for her

The Swiss star admitted to having failed to get a measure of the Pole’s power-packed game, adding that she also couldn’t rightly anticipate which areas of the court Swiatek was going to target.

“I was struggling with her game (a) little bit. I never knew where she’s going to play. She played, yeah, like it was overwhelming for me,” said Bencic, in a frank assessment of her performance in the title clash.

The match stats bore telltale evidence of where things went so horribly wrong for the soft-spoken Swiss. In what was perhaps the biggest difference between the finalists, Swiatek won a massive 91% of her points on the first serve while Bencic trailed at a lowly 61%.

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Also, the Pole converted 4 of the 6 breakpoints that she created, while the Swiss starlet couldn’t manage a single one.

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Iga Swiatek Upsets Belinda Bencic to Clinch Maiden Hard-Court Title at WTA Adelaide 2021

It was, perhaps, the fitting result in a match the reigning French Open champion dominated from start to finish.

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Priyabrata Chowdhury is a tennis author for EssentiallySports. He has been a print journalist for a decade, producing news pages for leading national dailies such as the Hindustan Times and The New Indian Express. His passion for sports eventually drove him to tennis writing.

“I Was Struggling”: Belinda Bencic Opens Up on Her Loss at WTA Adelaide 2021 to Iga Swiatek

Belinda Bencic reveals she felt “little bit off” in the final against Iga Swiatek

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Belinda Bencic admits Iga Swiatek’s power-packed game was “overwhelming” for her