Madison Keys sent top-seeded Iga Swiatek packing on Thursday with a stellar 6-3, 6-4 victory to reach the quarterfinals of the Western & Southern Open at Mason, Ohio.
Keys won nine consecutive games at one point at the Cincinnati-area event while thoroughly outplaying Swiatek, who has struggled since winning the French Open in the spring.
The result also was stunning. When Swiatek and Keys met in the Indian Wells quarterfinals in March, the Polish standout rolled to an easy 6-1, 6-0 victory.
It was a total turnaround in this meeting, which marked Keys' first win against Swiatek in three meetings.
"I'm going to be totally honest," Keys said. "After I got two games, I was like, 'OK, it's better than last time. It's fine.'
"Honestly, that really just made me relax, but I think also this is the first time we have played on a faster court so I definitely felt more comfortable with the conditions just from the start. I think I settled in pretty quickly."
Keys' nine-win run gave her a 5-0 lead in the second set. Swiatek fought back by winning the next four games before Keys closed out the straight-sets win.
"I was really just thinking that I had to focus a lot on why I got in the position of being up 5-Love," Keys said. "I think I backed off a little bit, and I think she started playing better."
Keys had a 14-6 edge in winners and both players committed 14 unforced errors in the 85-minute match.
Keys next faces Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan. The Wimbledon champion had nine aces while rolling to a 6-2, 6-4 victory over Alison Riske-Amritraj.
Second-seeded Anett Kontaveit of Estonia, fifth-seeded Ons Jabeur of Tunisia and 10th-seeded Emma Raducanu of Great Britain joined Swiatek in the elimination line.
China's Shuai Zhang rallied for a 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 upset of Kontaveit, while Czech Petra Kvitova knocked off Jabeur 6-1, 4-6, 6-0.
Seventh-seeded Jessica Pegula of the United States topped Raducanu, the reigning U.S. Open champion, 7-5, 6-4.
Ahead of her title defense in New York later this month, Raducanu lost in the second round of all three of this year's majors to date, and her two best 2022 results were quarterfinal losses in Stuttgart, Germany, and Washington.
Also, France's Caroline Garcia ousted Elise Mertens of Belgium 6-4, 7-5. Garcia's quarterfinal foe will be the winner of the last Thursday match between sixth-seeded Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and the United States' Shelby Rogers.
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