Kostyuk to – Marta Kostyuk and Iga Swiatek both powered through straight-sets wins on Friday at Roland Garros to set up a blockbuster fourth-round matchup. Kostyuk extended her unbeaten clay streak to 15 matches with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Viktorija Golubic, while Swiatek, a
For the first time in this year’s Roland Garros draw, the court felt like it was holding its breath.
Marta Kostyuk stepped onto Court Simonne-Mathieu on Friday and looked like the player who arrives already certain about the next ball. A 6-4. 6-3 win over Viktorija Golubic did more than take her to the fourth round—it stretched her clay-court run to 15 straight wins this season. On the other side of the bracket. Iga Swiatek followed with her own straight-sets performance. beating Magda Linette 6-4. 6-4. putting the tournament’s most accomplished active Roland Garros performer directly in her path.
The matchup is a clash of timing and truth: Kostyuk’s current form on clay versus Swiatek’s record of surviving every kind of pressure Roland Garros can invent.
Kostyuk. now riding a winning streak that includes titles in Rouen and Madrid and a win in Billie Jean King Cup Qualifiers. has also stayed unbeaten on clay this year. lifting her tally to a 15-match run. She is 23 years old. and her clay-court surge has turned her into the kind of opponent who makes a whole stadium lean forward—especially when she’s hitting with that mix of creativity and urgency.
In Friday’s match. the numbers told the story but didn’t soften it: Kostyuk smashed 35 winners. came to net 34 times. and won 18 of those points. Her drive volley stood out as the kind of high-risk shot that can either spark momentum or vanish under pressure—except she kept it coming. pressing Golubic with intent even when execution swung between clean and chaotic. with Golubic responding using superb passes.
Golubic. 33 and playing in the third round of Roland Garros for the first time. offered the tour’s familiar beauty in her own way. Her single-handed backhand down-the-line winner drew murmurs of appreciation around Court Simonne-Mathieu. and there were classic clay exchanges that looked built for highlights. But Kostyuk didn’t blink.
The pressure showed in the tight moments. Kostyuk punished Golubic’s second serve repeatedly, with the World No. 82 winning only eight points behind it. And when the first set tightened into something that could easily swing away, Kostyuk kept the foot on the pedal.
The final game of the first set lasted 15 minutes—one-quarter of the entire set. Kostyuk navigated eight deuces. saved Golubic from taking five game points. and finally converted her fifth set point when Golubic sent a backhand wide. It was a game that didn’t just decide the set; it decided the tempo of the match.
Swiatek’s win over Linette carried its own kind of certainty. The No. 3 seed. a four-time champion in Paris. used a 6-4. 6-4 scoreline to reach the fourth round for an eighth straight year. She has never lost before this stage. Her larger history at Roland Garros is even more difficult to ignore: she has won 93% of her matches there. holding a 43-3 record overall. Only Chris Evert and Stefanie Graf have won the tournament more times in the Open Era.
On the current season’s clay. Swiatek’s path hasn’t been the same kind of smooth as Kostyuk’s unbeaten streak. Swiatek’s clay-court record this year is 9-3, with a quarterfinal loss in Stuttgart to Mirra Andreeva. She also retired due to illness against Ann Li in Madrid. and later lost in the semifinals to Elina Svitolina in Rome. Still, she has advanced to the second week of a major for the fourth time overall.
That matters because Kostyuk’s momentum is real, and so is the rivalry’s weight.
Kostyuk enters the meeting aware of what Swiatek brings—but also aware of what she wants to change. Swiatek has dominated their personal history. winning every one of their three professional meetings and never dropping a set to the Ukrainian. Their last clash was in Cincinnati 2024, where Swiatek won their third-round match 6-2, 6-2. Their previous Roland Garros meeting came in the 2021 fourth round. when Swiatek won 6-3. 6-4. marking Kostyuk’s Grand Slam second-week debut.
They haven’t played since Cincinnati 2024, but Kostyuk spoke as if the gap has sharpened her focus rather than softened it.
“I definitely have a different feeling going into this match,” she said in her press conference. “Because I feel like last time that I played her in Cincinnati, I lost this match way before it even started, and I don’t feel the same this time.”
She knows the scoreboard still reads in Swiatek’s favor. “But I’m still the person who lost to her three times, and she’s won this tournament four times.”
Still, she refused to treat that as destiny. “I would love to be the one who is a favorite in this match, but I still don’t think it’s the case, even though I have this really long streak.”
Then came the most revealing part: how she plans to hold onto herself inside the pressure. “But it’s not going to ruin my day or ruin my game. I still want to go out and try my best and enjoy. Like, I have never taken a set off her. Even if I win one set in the next match, I’m going to be very happy.”.
Swiatek’s mindset, meanwhile, has been shaped by more than clay. Her recent improvement started after a hard stop earlier this season.
After losing to Linette 1-6. 7-5. 6-3 in the Miami second round—an outcome that ended a 73-match winning streak in tour-level opening matches stretching back to 2021—Swiatek called the result “the world’s worst nightmare a tennis player can have.” Three days later. she ended her partnership with coach Wim Fissette.
The following week brought a change that Swiatek says she can feel in her decisions now. She hired Francisco Roig and took herself to the Rafa Nadal Academy on Mallorca to rediscover her game, specifically “her on-court decision-making process.”
“For sure this is something that I wanted to improve. because I was not in a good place tennis-wise. ” she said after avenging the loss to Linette. “It was hard to play with my intuition on the hard court season this year. I feel like we focused a lot on that with Francisco at the beginning. Also, for me to not be rushed into decisions because I feel like I’m going to miss or something.”.
In Swiatek’s account, the difference isn’t just technique—it’s restraint. “So I feel much more solid. and that gives me confidence that I can play the next ball back and next ball back … that I don’t need to finish the rally straight away. Now I feel that for most of time I make good decisions and kind of rational …”.
She credits the work and the timing. “Overall I feel like the decision-making has been better, and that’s an improvement. I mean, after how I played in the States, honestly, anything better is positive. I should also appreciate it, because it wouldn’t be possible without Francis.”
Kostyuk’s own explanation for her clay surge points in a different direction—less about fixing what’s broken and more about returning to what made her dangerous in the first place.
As a child, Kostyuk thrived on clay, a surface that rewarded her natural creativity and athleticism. But she described a moment when she felt she had to change.
“Then something happened,” she recalled in her on-court interview. “I decided I need to grow up, I need to play different — and it wasn’t working well.”
Her theory now is that she found the playful version of herself again. “I think I went back to little me,” she said. “I feel like I found again that joy of creating points, changing rhythm, running around a little bit. It’s something I love to do and it’s something that’s not very difficult for me.”
That spirit showed in Friday’s match, with the aggression relentless and the willingness to take risks clear—whether it came in the high-pressure volleying or the way she kept converting after exhausting sequences.
For all the numbers, the heart of the story comes down to this: Swiatek has the history, and Kostyuk has the rhythm she’s been searching for.
When the rivalry resumes at Roland Garros, it won’t be only about which player plays better on the day. It will be about whether Kostyuk’s current clay confidence can finally interrupt the script Swiatek has written across their meetings—and whether Swiatek’s improved decision-making can keep holding up when a streak like Kostyuk’s arrives with both winners and belief.
Marta Kostyuk Iga Swiatek Roland Garros fourth round clay court Viktorija Golubic Magda Linette