As seeds fall around her, Iga Swiatek restores order in Rome

WATCH: Iga Swiatek was a 6-0, 6-0 winner in Rome for the second time in her career by beating Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Friday.

As chaos swirled around her, Iga Swiatek restored order at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia.

After No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka and No. 3 seed Jessica Pegula were bounced out of the tournament on Thursday by Sofia Kenin and Taylor Townsend, respectively, Swiatek might've been forgiven if she felt uneasy coming into her opening match against Anastasia Pavlychenkova, the former Roland Garros finalist who's making a return this spring from a knee injury that forced her to end her 2022 season after this very event.

Not so much: For the second time in her career, Swiatek scored a 6-0, 6-0 double bagel on Rome's Court Centrale with a 67-minute triumph. A two-time defending champion in Rome, Swiatek has now won her last 12 matches in the Italian capital. (She double-bageled Karolina Pliskova to win the first of those titles in 2021.)

"When I'm playing these kind of matches, I'm just trying to be focused," the world No. 1 said afterwards. "It's actually pretty hard to be focused when you are really thinking [about the score]. So I'm trying to remember what got me this nice score, what I should do to continue playing that well. I just want to be consistent in it.

"In my opinion, like, the score doesn't really matter and it doesn't have any influence on my feeling on the court. I'm just trying to play best tennis no matter what the score is."

Swiatek and No. 5 seed Caroline Garcia (who eeked by Romania's Ana Bogdan in her Thursday opener 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 after Bogdan led 5-3 and served for the win in the third) are the only Top-5 seeds remaining in the Eternal City after No. 4 seed Ons Jabeur, in her first match in a month after suffering a calf injury against Swiatek in the semifinals of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, was beaten by Paula Badosa later on Friday.

Swiatek was already the odds-on favorite in Rome, and now, it seems she might be it even more so. A winner of 47 of her last 51 matches on clay, Swiatek is the sixth woman in the Open Era to post a Rome win streak of a dozen matches or more, joining Chris Evert, Conchita Martinez, Gabriela Sabatini, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams.

But while she recognizes the situation before her at one of her favorite events, it's not something she's actively thinking about. Instead, her focus is just between the white lines on the court. It needs to be, she says.

"I feel pretty confident here," she said. "I feel like these are the right circumstances and right conditions for me to play my solid game. So I'm happy to be here and I'm happy that I'm back.

"This court is a little bit different than most of the stadiums because the audience I feel like [is a] little bit closer to the court. There's a lot of walking and a lot of sometimes nice cheering. You have to kind of be focused and look at what's going on on court and not on the audience.

"For sure, for the past years, I really appreciated playing here because the Italian people are really emotional and they're just enjoy good tennis. It's nice to play with them."

Swiatek's next foe will be either No. 28 seed Bernarda Pera, who she beat last week in Madrid, or Ukraine's Lesia Tsurenko.