The rap against Iga Swiatek, the winner of four titles on the red clay of Roland Garros, including the last three, is that she can’t cut it on the hard courts. But folks often forget that the top-ranked Pole, who recently rang in her 117th overall week at No. 1, was the US Open champion in 2022, that she owns 12 career titles on cement.
No one-surface wonder here.
“Honestly, I think it’s just, like, a little mistake that people make in their brains,” said the 23-year-old Swiatek last week in Cincinnati, where she reached the semifinals, yes, on a hard court. Not that Swiatek, the top seed at the 2024 US Open, will tell you she’s by any means at home on the surface. In fact, during her run to the title here two years ago, she insists she never really found her footing.
“That was the Grand Slam that I was least chilled at. Even though I won, I didn’t feel comfortable on the court at all,” she told the gathered media on Friday in New York. “I didn’t feel like I could play my game naturally.”
And that’s bad news for the competition. Even when she’s not on her game, Swiatek can compete for the very biggest titles in the sport.
“The US Open [in] 2022 actually taught me that I can win even though I’m not feeling 100 percent,” she said. “I’m trying to learn from past experiences. I feel like I’m maybe a little bit smarter and, hopefully, I’m going to be able to use that.”
Swiatek’s year has been a whirlwind: She kicked off 2024 with her third straight title in Doha; captured a third consecutive WTA 1000 trophy in Indian Wells; saved three championship points against rival Aryna Sabalenka to defend her crown in Madrid; took the title in Rome for the third time in four years; then made it back-to-back-to-back Roland Garros triumphs.
But the unrelenting calendar seemed to catch up with the Warsaw native at the Olympics, where she suffered an emotional 6-2, 7-5 loss at the hands of eventual gold medalist Zheng Qinwen and had to settle for bronze.
By the time she arrived in Cincinnati, Swiatek said what she needed most was a reset, a chance to refine her game. Where better than the American Midwest to let your hair down and work on a few things? She said that she was essentially looking at the WTA 1000 as “a practice tournament.”
Not that she’d didn’t care about the outcome, but she wanted to implement all that she had been honing on the practice court.
“It’s been a really intense season,” she said. “After the Olympics, it hasn’t been easy. I feel the best when I’m just focused on practicing and grinding on the court, and really focus on just making my game better and not on the results. I’m just going to try to keep that mindset and that attitude.”
Now two years removed from that hard-court breakthrough in Flushing Meadows, Swiatek will open against Kamilla Rakhimova, a lucky loser from the qualifying rounds. Beyond that could be a quarterfinal with Toronto champion and Cincinnati finalist Jessica Pegula, though Swiatek says she’s not putting any pressure on herself. She made that mistake here last year.
“I felt I had many things to defend, like the world No. 1 position, all my points and also the title itself. I felt like I had a lot of baggage on my shoulders,” she said. “This year, it’s a little bit different. This year, I’m just trying to focus on what I should do tennis-wise to play the best game possible. My expectations are not so high compared to last year.”
