Iga Swiatek says she is “just trying to be more chill off the court” so she avoids entering matches feeling tense or tight. After an astonishing 2022 season, Swiatek placed enormous pressure on herself to win the Australian Open.
But it didn’t end well for Swiatek, who suffered a shock Australian Open round-of-16 loss to Elena Rybakina. After Australia, Swiatek took time to “reset” and won the Doha title in her first tournament back. Following a 6-0 6-1 Doha semifinal win over Veronika Kudermetova, Swiatek opened up about her new approach.
“Well, I don’t know about confidence, but for sure I feel like I’m more free here. I really used the time after Australian Open to reset and I’m trying to take a new approach with less expectations and more like focusing on the technique and less, I don’t know, overthinking that every practice is going to influence my game.
I’m just kind of trying to chill down off the court as well so I can have more freedom on court. And for sure here I felt that, yeah,” Swiatek said, per Sportskeeda.
Swiatek: I know there will be challenging moments
Swiatek’s goal is to stay pressure-free as much as possible but she is well aware that there will be moments on the court when she will start to feel tense.
“Well, on one hand, like tricking your brain is always going to be tough, so you have to kind of accept that these thoughts are going to come. It’s not easy. For sure I have moments where it feels like impossible to kind of fight it, you know,” Swiatek noted.
Last year, Swiatek enjoyed one of the most dominant seasons in recent memory and established herself as the best player on the WTA Tour. Swiatek feeling enormous pressure in Australia wasn’t really surprising since many wanted to see how she would do in the first Grand Slam slam of the 2023 season after an impressive 2022.
