Iga Swiatek wins Rome Masters with her new racquet, the Tecnifibre T-Rebound Tempo 285. It shows that the switch didn’t hurt her game.
I wrote about Iga Swiatek’s new racquet here and speculated that switching racquets from her Prince Textreme Tour 290 that she won the French Open with, to a new brand and frame, might be risky. There have been numerous racquet changes gone wrong for pros over the years as they need to rely a hundred percent on their equipment. But Iga Swiatek just proved that the Tecnifibre T-Rebound Tempo 285 works as well for her game as the Prince. She won the Rome Masters in spectacular fashion, defeating Karolina Pliskova 6-0 6-0 in the final!
When Iga is on her game, all cylinders firing, she seems almost unstoppable and she will be one of the favorites at the French Open when she is defending her title in a couple of weeks.
Iga’s road to the Rome Masters title:
- Thursday: 2 match points saved to win an epic match
- Saturday: Quarter-final and semi-final won on the same day
- Sunday: 1st M1000 title with a final won 6/0 6/0 in just 46 minutes
- Monday: Entry this morning into the WTA Top10, at the #9 rank
Who can threaten Iga’s second Grand Slam title?
Since Naomi Osaka seems to have a hard time on the red dirt, it’s more likely that Ash Barty will be the one to pose the biggest threat to Iga and the other plays in the draw. The Aussie is a deserving world number one, who has been in great form during the clay-court season so far and should be the favorite ahead of the event. Aryna Sabalenka is not as confident on clay, but Simona Halep should be a contender for another French Open title.
Serena Williams will also play of course and if she can get going, she is another obvious favorite to the title as she goes for grand slam title number 24.
My pick ahead of the tournament is Barty, with Swiatek coming in as nr 2 and Halep as number three. I think you need to enjoy/understand the clay well to be a winner at the French Open now that the WTA tour is stronger than ever.
The odds from a major bookmaker puts Swiatek as the favorite at 4.50, Barty at 6.00, Sabalenka at 8.50, Muguruza at 10, Halpe at 11, Svitolina at 13, and Osaka at 15 times your money. They offer odds of 17.00 on Serena winning, which I think is pretty fair as we haven’t seen much of Serena’s tennis in 2021.
Who do you think can threaten Iga and her title defense?
I believe Halep is out injuredd until Wimby, calf tear, so a doubt for RG. Barty is nursing a couple of issues. Williams has surely no hope against a consistent hitter and good mover on clay. Osaka needs to learn to play on the dirt. Sabalenka a decent chance after her form of late. Swiatek, Swiatek, Swiatek. Go IGA!!!
Be interesting to try her frame….
Although Iga endorses the T-Rebound Tempo, i.e. Tecnifibre says on their website that she uses it, that range of rackets are ‘Designed for Women’ and have a 1cm shorter length. I rather doubt that she is using a shorter length racket, coming from the normal length Prince before. So it is most likely that she is using TF’s normal length racket with a similar 100sqi, 16×19 and 290g specs to her previous racket, which would get you to either the T-Fight RS 280, 295 or the old T-Flash 285.
What’s interesting is that she can serve at 110mph and retrun serves from Pliskova at 120mph with control, using a 290g racket, which shows you that technique is everything.
@Tennis Lion, guess we will have to wait and see from a stringer or someone in the know.
She wouldn’t be the first to experiment with a shorter frame, amongst others….Andre Agassi allegedly tinkered with this to assist against big servers.
IGA sometimes has an inherently slightly closer contact on her forehand, which assists in a way with top spin and her ability to shift position and direction of the ball, BUT, she could do that with a standard length frame so I really don’t know.
The give away in that model frame off memory is the 1cm is taken away between the top of the grip and where the V starts, BUT, you could make a standard length frame look that way by wrapping an extra but of grip around.
The weight, SW and balance will be personal to her, and I very much doubt they are standard base weight, as we’re her Prince frames. If I had to guess an unstrung weight I’d say 305-310g.
She has some serious skill sets, which is a blessing and a curse, depending on how her shot selection mental sub conscious computer is processing on that given day.
She has the ability to play pretty unstoppable tennis, against even the very best.
We will see, we will see, I really like her.
Maybe Dan Kiernan at SOTO knows more regs her frame specs, but, also maybe he can’t say.
Let’s see how she handles the pressure of defending the title. Yesterday I saw a bit of last year’s final for the first time, I don’t follow the WTA Tour, and clay season is a bit boring for me. That girl has some serious weapons, and a large margin to improve at 19 or 20.
Has for her racquet, well… Everybody already knows that what pro’s are holding usually is a completely different tool to what’s available on stores. Surely she won RG with an off the shelf Prince, probably they built something close to that racquet, with a couple of improved tweeks here and there to suit her linking better. It’s not hard to clone another brand’s stick
J, yes it’s highly unlikely she uses the T-Rebound mold as changing length and SW would be a massive move that there was no evidence she wanted to make. Looking closely at the pics from Rome and the TF website, her racket looks most like the XTC molds, especially the grommet length and thickness. Hence TF-295RS appears the most likely starting point.