The last two months have been full of mixed emotions for Iga Swiatek. The Polish woman won the French Open by confirming she is the best in the world on red clay, but failed to extend her dominance further during the summer.
Iga was eliminated early at the Wimbledon Championships, where she showed that she still didn’t have the right feeling with grass. The Polish woman was a great favourite to win the gold medal at the Paris Olympics, which took place on the same red clay as the French Open.
Swiatek was unable to handle his nerves and pressure well, greeting Paris with a partially disappointing result. The Polish champion literally collapsed in the semi-final and burst into tears in front of journalists, but she was able to react quickly and won a precious bronze medal. Despite some disappointment, Iga is still playing a great season and has plenty of time to win other great titles.
Swiatek is already qualified
The WTA Finals already have the first protagonist. The competition between the best eight tennis players of the year, which will be held in Riyadh from this year, will be played from 2nd to 9th November, but today there is already a certain player to take part. It is the number one in the world Iga Swiatek, now for some years absolute dominator of the WTA tour. As the governing body of women’s tennis announced on Wednesday, the reigning champion of Poland is the first woman to qualify for the end-of-year finals.
This tournament, played in the last editions in Guadalajara, has lost its appeal and to make it spectacular again, the WTA decided to sign an agreement with Saudi Arabia for the three years 2024-2026. The event, which features the top eight women’s singles and doubles players, will offer a record prize money of $15.25 million, with increases in 2025 and 2026.
The 23-year-old from Warsaw has already taken her pass for the end of the year event, thanks to another season in which she proved herself the tennis player to beat. In 11 tournaments (including the United Cup with his national team, where he reached the final winning all seven matches) Swiatek won the trophy on five occasions, plus a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics. A monstrous record of 52 wins and 5 losses (more than 90% of victories), which earned him wins at Roland Garros and four Master 1000 in Doha, Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome. Only disappointments, the premature elimination in the third round of the Australian Open and Wimbledon and that third place at the Olympic Games arrived despite being favored to win gold.
The 23-year-old, who leads the WTA ranking with a lead of over 3,000 points on the second (Coco Gauff), has already accumulated 7465 points in the annual race, exactly 700 more than necessary for qualification. The Polish woman will be sure to defend her title in 2023, which she won by dominating against Jessica Pegula in the final.
The experience at the Paris Olympics
The experience at the Paris Olympics will help Swiatek a lot for the future: “I wasn’t quite aware how deep it was in me and how much baggage that was. I know that I haven’t been playing my A-game here probably. I wasn’t feeling like I can move really naturally and in a way that I’m used to on clay. I’m happy anyway that I pushed through that and I’m here with a bronze medal.
I was maybe a little bit too arrogant with myself because I thought that I handled so much pressure before that I think I’m going to handle this one as well. And now I actually am really motivated to work even harder and I think I’m going to have a little bit more humility. I think if I hadn’t played today I would cry for a week, so I needed to get it together. The very fact that in tennis, if we lose, we normally say goodbye to the competition but this time I had to get out there one more time. I had to be professional, get it together and win the last match. It meant it was different from other regular competitions.
Standing on the podium, my whole career kind of flashed before my eyes, how I started, never really expecting to be fighting for medals and playing on this level, so it’s still in a way an abstract concept to me, I am proud of my self very much.” The Polish champion will have to work on herself to recover her energy and be ready for the second part of the season.
