Iga Swiatek was hurried, stressed and on the verge of a defeat after a dominant winning streak. It was Wimbledon in 2022 and Alize Cornet halted Swiatek’s run of 37 wins in a row in the third round. Of all the losses in Swiatek’s career, this is the one that she could perhaps accept the most; given her run of wins, that she was playing on grass – her least favourite surface – and that she would finish the year with the French Open and US Open titles and as the World No 1.
But the point is, even then, the experience of watching Swiatek fall to defeat on Centre Court was still an uncomfortable one. As she trailed, Swiatek lost the one thing she prizes above all else: control, of every point and every shot, and of the world she is living in. With Swiatek under pressure and Cornet managing to take time away from her opponent, her errors spiralled, deepening the cycle of what at the time was an extremely rare defeat.
To move on from that example, as Swiatek now returns to the French Open it feels as if the 23-year-old has fallen deeper into that spiral than at any point in her career since turning World No 1 three years ago. Roland Garros brings her struggles on the court into sharp focus: Swiatek has not reached a final, let alone won a title, since beating Jasmine Paolini to win her fourth French Open 12 months ago. The defending champion will arrive in Paris as the fifth seed, after Paolini’s triumph at the Italian Open.
Swiatek has so far been unable to correct the course of the toughest year of her career. If anything, the clay-court season has accentuated her struggles. As well as the shocking, landslide 6-1 6-1 defeat to Coco Gauff in Madrid, there was another loss to Jelena Ostapenko in Stuttgart, adding to her losing record against the Latvian, as well as a third-round exit from Rome against another adversary in Danielle Collins. Swiatek’s on-court demeanour, particularly in the rout against Gauff, has been concerning.
It has also been the opposite of what we have come to expect from Swiatek, a player who has modelled her mental approach and attitude towards tennis on Rafael Nadal’s relentless focus, taking it all one point at a time. It is why Swiatek has accumulated so many one-sided victories, because she is always playing in the moment, maintaining her immaculate footwork and aggression, keeping the pedal down. It had led to three French Open titles in a row, a run where Swiatek almost made the opposition irrelevant.
There is a double-standard there of course, one that is unfair to expect and impossible to maintain. Swiatek has highlighted it herself. “When I’m highly focused and don’t show many emotions on court, I’m called a robot, my attitude labelled as inhuman. [When] I’m more expressive, showing feelings or struggling internally, I’m suddenly labelled immature or hysterical,” she said in February, following a tough loss at Indian Wells where she almost hit a ball boy in frustration during her defeat to Mirra Andreeva.
Swiatek has yet to win a title since she returned from a one-month doping suspension for testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine last August. The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) accepted the positive test was due to a contaminated batch of the melatonin Swiatek used to deal with jet lag and sleep issues. Swiatek’s level of fault was found to be at the lowest end of the range for “no significant fault or negligence”.
But the attention was difficult. Swiatek said she spent “three weeks crying daily” as her “career hung in the balance”. She was replaced at World No 1 by Australian Open and US Open champion Aryna Sabalenka, as Swiatek missed the majority of the Asian hard-court swing. At around the same time, Swiatek parted ways with her coach Tomasz Wiktorowski after three years of working together. There have yet to be clear signs of progress under her new coach Wim Fissette.
A return to Roland Garros, where Swiatek has won four or her five grand slam titles and was beginning to earn the nickname ‘Queen of Clay’ following her latest triumph last season, is a place where she can receive some respite. Paris is also where some of Swiatek’s difficulties began, however, as it was on those favoured clay-courts last August where she was beaten in the Olympic semi-finals by Qinwen Zheng, ending her 25-match winning streak at Roland Garros.
Swiatek was in tears having believed she had fallen short under the pressure of winning gold for Poland, although she did go on to win Olympic bronze. But Swiatek has been a tough watch since, a player who appears too wrapped in on trying to rewrite the past, having taken her eye off of her present. Her rivals for the French throne, mainly Sabalenka, Gauff and Paolini, will believe there is a chance of winning in Paris this year, unless Swiatek can find a way of stopping the slide.
