Swiatek: “I just hope I’m gonna focus on just tennis”

Iga Swiatek had the best start for her clay season by winning the title in Stuttgart. She hopes she can keep avoiding the pressure of the favorite.

Iga Swiatek Stuttgart 2023 (AI _ Reuters _ Panoramic)

Carole Bouchard

April 23, 2023

Iga Swiatek was as happy as she was relieved on Sunday after her triumph in Stuttgart. Out of Miami because of a rib injury, the Pole showed no sign of rust nor of extra pressure on her shoulders as she keeps defending all the titles won the last season. Arriving in the last stretch before Roland-Garros after having also signed with Roger Federer’s brand, she was very satisfied with her mindset: she keeps her eyes on the prize and nothing else.

“There are a lot of emotions, honestly”, Swiatek said. “I wanted to win really, really hard, but I knew that I can’t really focus on that and that I just have to keep doing my job as I did in previous matches. I’m pretty happy that I could kind of have a good mentality and just focus on what I want to do tennis-wise and not, you know, what’s gonna happen after the match.”

Expected to win every single tournament she plays, Swiatek had a rough time at the Australian Open but found her footing after that. It’s clear that this season she has to work as much on her nerves as on her game. “The beginning of the season was so tough that I’m happy to be in that place now. I just hope I’m gonna kind of continue having that good mindset without looking at all this stuff. I don’t care, honestly. I just want to play good tennis. I don’t want to think about all that stuff that is usually bothering us. I was able to do that here. I really like playing on clay, so I just hope I’m gonna focus on just tennis, you know, just playing.”

Tennis Majors

Many eyes were on her serve this week in Stuttgart, to catch any sign of discomfort following that rib injury. But Swiatek spent many hours on the practice court in Germany in order to fix that shot quickly, and as seen again during the final, it seems that this shot hasn’t suffered that much for the injury and the bit of time off. “Today I was so focused and like sharp, I could actually take care of that. Maybe in the second set, it got a little bit shaky on my first serve but from the beginning, I felt like this is a good day, and I feel like every day I have been doing progress. Even when I played these two games against Ons, I felt like I’m starting to feel better and better. So I just believed in it, and I did my work, you know, throughout the whole week, and it paid off today.”

“I just hope that I’m not gonna be the kind of person who is going to suddenly expect it in every tournament”, Swiatek

Swiatek is well used to her World No.1 status by now and, instead of bringing the extra pressure of the one that has to win it all, she showed in Stuttgart again that she could instead use the experience that goes with it. “Last year was really, really tough, and I felt like this season may be tough because of what people are saying and expectations from the outside. Also, I know how it is to like to win these tournaments in a row. So I just hope that I’m not gonna be the kind of person who is going to suddenly expect it in every tournament. So I’m happy that I managed to work through it. Maybe I’m still gonna have situations like that, but that was the biggest thing that I had to go through at the beginning of the year. Now I feel like I can just use my experience a little bit more, more than like worry about stuff. I’m just happy that I’m World No. 1 for more than a year, and it’s an exciting time.”