Self-belief and adaptability are two of the most precious commodities a tennis player can possess. Last November, as she departed the WTA Finals in Guadalajara after losing two of her three group matches, Iga Swiatek targeted more of both.
“I would love to be, as a player, more settled in everything,” said Swiatek. “Not going from being super confident to, ‘Hey, I’m new here, I don’t really know what to do.’ Just trust myself a little bit more.
“For sure we’re going to work hard for me to have more options on court also – being able to adjust more to the situation that I have [in a] match.”
Swiatek, the world No 1 and top seed at the US Open, succeeded beyond her wildest dreams in achieving those aims. Encouraged by Tomasz Wiktorowski, the coach to whom she turned in the off-season after ending her five-year collaboration with Piotr Sierzputowski, she adopted a more aggressive style of play and promptly reached the last four at the Australian Open. Then she started winning, and just couldn’t stop.
Victory in Qatar was followed by the Sunshine Double of Indian Wells and Miami. Success bred confidence. When Ashleigh Barty retired and Swiatek inherited the No 1 ranking, the Pole wore the mantle lightly, winning in Stuttgart and Rome before claiming her second major title at Roland Garros. By the time she was finally beaten by Alizé Cornet in the third round of Wimbledon, she had claimed 37 straight victories, the longest winning run since 1997.
But nothing lasts forever in sport. Confidence is ephemeral, the need for adaptation and improvement constant. Last week in Cincinnati, after Madison Keys had consigned her to a fourth defeat in eight matches, Swiatek was asked where her priorities lay ahead of the US Open. Her response was illuminating, and more than a little surprising.
“I would say getting back to the mental discipline and not really coming back to what happened in the first part of the season, because right now I feel like it’s a totally different story,” said Swiatek.
“For sure, switching to a little bit of a different game plan, to not make so many mistakes. I think I have to really play without any expectations because it’s just hard here to control the ball.”
Different story, different game plan, different expectations. Coming from a player who did not put a foot wrong for more than four months, it all felt a bit drastic. Not least because, if there is a pattern to Swiatek’s recent setbacks, it is not one that can be easily replicated. Each of her defeats came against an ultra-aggressive opponent playing first-strike tennis of the highest order. Cornet has produced some of the finest form of her career this season, and nowhere more so than on Centre Court against Swiatek. Keys thrives on the conditions in Cincinnati, where she was the champion three years ago. Caroline Garcia, who went on to win the Poland Open after beating Swiatek in the quarter-finals, has been rivalled only by Beatriz Haddad Maia, the Brazilian who finished runner-up in Toronto after defeating the world No 1, as the summer’s hottest player. Does Swiatek really need to reinvent the wheel, or is there something else at play?
There is certainly something else in play, and that is the balls used at the women’s events in the US Open series, which have become a major talking point since Swiatek complained in Cincinnati that they “fly like crazy”. For a woman who has admitted that she is too shy to speak to Serena Williams in the locker room – “I’m still planning to do that,” she said in New York – the Pole was unusually uninhibited when the subject was raised, questioning why the US Open stands alone among the four grand slams in using different balls for the men’s and women’s draws.
“I don’t like them,” she said of the regular duty Wilson balls, which have less felt than the extra-duty ones used by the men, and cannot be obtained in Europe. “Basically, the thing is that they are lighter. They fly like crazy.
“Right now we play powerful, and we kind of can’t loosen up our hands with these balls. I know that there are many players who complain, and many of them are top 10. We make more mistakes, for sure. So I don’t think that’s nice to watch, visually.”
Swiatek has a point. Her feelings have been echoed by Paula Badosa, the Spanish fourth seed, as well as the American doubles specialist Nicole Melichar-Martinez, who highlighted the challenge of having to adjust to the men’s ball in the mixed event.
Such criticisms are not new. Earlier this year, Barty’s coach Craig Tyzzer called for a change to the ball used by the women in New York, revealing that Barty was forced to switch from gut strings to polyester “just to get any sort of control” and branding it “a terrible ball for someone like Ash”. The same may be said for Swiatek, who, like Barty, generates heavy topspin with her forehand and favours a heavily kicked serve – shots that tend to fly off the racket when there is insufficient felt on the ball to grip the strings.
Even so, it was out of character for Swiatek to stick her head above the parapet before playing Keys in Cincinnati. The Pole, who went on to lose in straight sets, is a sensitive and cerebral character who puts mental equilibrium front and centre of everything she does. She normally sidesteps controversy as deftly as she runs around her backhand, and it seems unlikely she would have welcomed the torrent of headlines her words generated.
Is it possible that, by speaking out, Swiatek disturbed the finely calibrated inner balance that has underpinned her extraordinary season? She certainly cut an unusually subdued figure against Keys, retreating into her shell as she conceded nine consecutive games after leading 3-2 in the first set. A couple of months ago, when she was conquering all before her, such a scenario would have been unthinkable. Notably, Swiatek was in no mood to stir the hornets’ nest further on the eve of the US Open.
“I feel like in Cincinnati I said all the stuff that I wanted to,” she said. “For sure, I don’t like the balls. But on the other hand, I’m here to compete and to play my best tennis. Everybody has the same conditions. I’m also at the same time trying to adjust and learn how to play with these balls.
“After a few games the conditions are totally changing, because they get more and more light, they lose fluffiness. It’s hard, sometimes, to adjust. I don’t want to really focus on that right now, because there’s a tournament coming up. I want to really do my best to adjust and to learn, because that’s what tennis players have to do.”
Clearly Swiatek is eager to move on – which is probably just as well, because her defeat in Cincinnati wasn’t simply down to the balls. Notably, Keys was able to keep her shots in play despite generating huge power and spin. As the American crunched forehands and caused Swiatek all manner of problems with her rearing kick serve, it was hard not to feel that the Pole’s dissatisfaction with the balls had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When she belatedly stirred herself, winning four games in a row from 5-0 down in the second set, Swiatek looked to have the beating of Keys, suggesting her difficulties ranged beyond niceties of equipment.
Did she talk herself out of the match? The question is speculative, but it feels no more unreasonable now than it did at Wimbledon, where she arrived in imperious form, unbeaten since February, only to play down her prospects before the fortnight was even underway. Swiatek talked of needing to figure out grass, of playing without expectations, of tennis being a game of ups and downs. It was all typically rational and considered, but not necessarily the kind of rhetoric one might expect to hear from a champion on the longest winning run for a quarter of a century.
It would be foolish to question the mental approach of a player whose professionalism extends to having a full-time sports psychologist in tow. The work Swiatek has done with Daria Abramowicz, whose attention to detail extends to every area of her professional life, has been at the heart of all she has achieved.
Even so, it seems legitimate to wonder whether the world’s best player might have evolved beyond limiting expectations. A different personality would have used the aura of invincibility Swiatek carried into Wimbledon to paper over any doubts. Bullishness, though, is not in the character of a woman noted for a refreshingly humble approach to her craft. Jelena Ostapenko she is not.
It is not hard to understand why Swiatek and her team wish to manage expectations. The downside to any extended unbeaten run is that it eventually becomes an end in its own right. Attention shifts from process to outcome, from the granular details that lay the foundations for success to the end result.
In 1984, when Helena Sukova ended Martina Navratilova’s 74-match winning streak at the Australian Open to derail her bid for a calendar-year grand slam, Pam Shriver’s coach Don Candy remarked that Navratilova had spent months playing not to lose, rather than to win. The big question, when such a run ends, is what comes next. Navratilova, who was 29 and at the height of her powers, was able to dust herself down and win all but five of her 89 matches the following year. Swiatek is 21 and, as she frequently reminds us, still learning.
Part of that process involves adapting to her elevated status while maintaining the self-belief that got her there; progression, rather than wholesale alteration. The scale of the challenge facing Swiatek may have changed since Guadalajara, but its essential nature remains unaltered.
As she attempts to advance beyond the fourth round of the US Open for the first time, now is the time for Swiatek to adjust to circumstance, just as she has vowed to – not rip up a winning formula.