She was the first player to beat Iga Swiatek in a WTA final but is now ranked outside the top 900 in the world

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Iga Swiatek lifted her 25th WTA title at the weekend after winning the Korea Open for the first time.

Swiatek sent a message to Ekaterina Alexandrova after beating her Russian opponent in a thrilling 2 hour and 41 minute final in Seoul.

This is the third title of the 2025 season for Swiatek, adding to her Wimbledon and Cincinnati Open victories.

Swiatek’s win over Alexandrova continued her dominant record in WTA finals, but one of the only players to beat her is now ranked outside the top 900.

Polona Hercog: The player who beat Iga Swiatek in her first WTA final

Swiatek is still only 24 years old, and has already won six Grand Slam titles, 11 WTA 1000 titles, six WTA 500 tournaments, one WTA 250 event and the WTA Finals.

The first of those titles was a big one, with Swiatek winning her first title at Roland Garros when she was a teenager.

However, Swiatek’s first title could have come at an even younger age if she had won her first WTA final.

In 2019, at the WTA 250 tournament in Lugano, Switzerland, then world number 115 Swiatek beat junior Grand Slam champion Kristyna Pliskova to reach her first ever final on the main tour.

That is where she would play Slovenian Polona Hercog, who had a career-high ranking of world number 35 and had already won two tour titles.

Hercog claimed her third WTA title after beating Swiatek, 6-3 3-6 6-3, to triumph on the clay courts of Lugano.

This is the last time that the WTA Tour fielded an event in Lugano, and it is also the last time that Hercog has been in a final.

After suffering a serious knee injury in 2022, Hercog took a lengthy break from the sport and there were even questions over whether she would ever play again.

However, Hercog was able to return to the match court again almost exactly one year later, and did find some success on the lower-level ITF Tour.

That being said, the Slovenian has not played in the main draw of any Grand Slam or WTA main tour event since October 2021, where she was beaten by Emma Raducanu in Cluj-Napoca.

Hercog has been forced to take another injury break between June 2024 and January 2025, and she has only played four tournaments all year, with the last of those coming when she lost in the first round of US Open qualifying.

As a result of this relative inactivity, Hercog is currently ranked as the world number 909 and is some way from the player that beat Swiatek six years ago.

Who are the three other players to have beaten Iga Swiatek in a WTA final?

Swiatek has won 83% of the 30 finals she has ever played, with only three more players beating the Pole since Hercog’s victory in 2019.

Only one of those players has managed to beat Swiatek in more than one final, with Barbora Krejcikova beating her twice within the space of a year in Ostrava and Dubai.

Aryna Sabalenka was the next player to beat Swiatek in a championship match, doing so on clay at the Madrid Open in 2023.

The most recent time that the world number two has lost in a final came in June 2025, with Jessica Pegula beating Swiatek in Bad Homburg.

This defeat did not appear to have too much of an impact on Swiatek, who would go on to win Wimbledon just two weeks later.

Swiatek’s next opportunity to reach a final is at the China Open, where she is both a former champion and the top seed.