The WTA Finals in Riyadh have kicked off with a bang. As the top 8 players geared up for an epic showdown, fans knew that the excitement meter was going to go off the charts. And match no. 1 delivered on that front, when Iga Swiatek dismantled Madison Keys in just over an hour. Swiatek’s racket did all the talking as she provided the home crowd with all the opening match entertainment. She even endeared herself to the audience after the match, but this time with her words.

Over the course of 61 minutes, the world No. 2 showed why she is considered a modern-day icon of tennis. In the quest for her second WTA championship, the Polish star ran riot over Keys to clinch a straightforward 6-1, 6-2 victory. After the match, the Polish star was asked how she felt about the love she received from the crowd. “It feels amazing. I see you guys are, you know, bigger quantity than last year and bigger quality, I guess, with the Polish flags,” quipped Swiatek. “No, just kidding,” she added with a smile, amidst cheers from the audience.

“I am happy that I can play in front of you, and I’m happy that this tournament is also developing. I feel that we can do a lot in terms of making tennis more popular and giving some opportunities in countries where they weren’t available before. I’m just happy to be a part of that,” she finished to another loud round of cheers.

The support for Swiatek was clear to see, with fans holding up handmade signs for the World No. 2 as well as the aforementioned Polish flags. It was a marked difference from last year’s finals (as Swiatek jokingly noted), when the Pole’s opening match against Barbora Krejcikova made headlines for all the wrong reasons: only around 400 spectators turned up to the 5,000-capacity King Saud University indoor arena.

As for the match itself, the clash was expected to be a 50-50 affair. While the Polish star registered a thumping victory over Amanda Anisimova to win the 2025 Wimbledon, Keys, too, held her nerves to clinch the Australian Open title this year.

But for Keys, her absence from the tour since her shock first round exit at the US Open made all the difference, as she lacked the match sharpness to keep up with a rampaging Swiatek. In the opening set alone, Keys committed as many as 15 unforced errors that set the tone for the game early on.

As for Swiatek, her behind-the-scenes efforts have yielded big results already.

Iga Swiatek came back from Poland better than ever

After suffering a shock defeat for the first time in 7 meetings to Jasmine Paolini at the Wuhan Open, Swiatek entered Riyadh with a clear point to prove. And she did it in style, as if to say that Wuhan was only a minor blip. And it seems the secret behind her comeback win lay all in the serve.

“Kind of [happy] with everything,” Swiatek said post-match. “Mostly my serve and overall focus. I was in the zone from the beginning to the end, and I really wanted to keep it that way.”

So what is it about the serve? Well, after Wuhan, Swiatek and coach Wim Fissette decamped to Warsaw for training, where they worked on her service game. But even with such a fast turnaround, change was apparent, with Coco Gauff’s ex-coach Brad Gilbert noting on X that it “looks like she has changed her serve to abbreviated motion.”

The abbreviated serve is a service motion that was famously used by Andy Roddick, where the racket head is pointing up at the moment the ball is tossed. It’s a motion that’s both compact but complex, reducing stress on the shoulder when performed correctly.

“All the things that I practiced, I got it together today to play with the right balance in terms of being solid and aggressive. So I’m overall happy with the work that I put in after the China swing, especially in Warsaw,” continued Swiatek after the match. “So that gives me, for sure, confidence to go forward and develop as a player. I’m happy that I could bring my game today, and I’ll be ready to do that the next days.”

All that’s left is to wait and watch if Iga Swiatek can do it all again in her next match.