'Anyone Can Win': Iga Swiatek Blames Early Dubai Exit On Scheduling
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Iga Swiatek blamed her loss in the quarter-finals of the 2025 Dubai Championships on the scheduling, and she's not the only one.
Swiatek has historically performed better than anyone else during the Middle Eastern swing. In fact, she won the Qatar Open every time in the past three seasons, and the Polish player also reached at least the semi-finals in the past two editions of the Dubai Championships.
This year, she lost in the semi-finals of the Qatar Open, and soon after that, the WTA World No. 2 player was eliminated also in the quarter-finals of the Dubai Championships.
Although many players would be happy with these results, such early losses during this part of the season are uncharacteristic for Swiatek, and she was able to identify the reason for them after her loss to Mirra Andreeva.
At the moment, there are two back-to-back WTA 1000 tournaments held in Doha and Dubai, which wasn't the case before. That means that after competing at a Grand Slam in January, players have two WTA 1000 events in February and two more in March.
That's an incredibly packed schedule, and it found its victims in both Doha and Dubai. According to Swiatek, the scheduling certainly contributed to her loss in the United Arab Emirates.
"For sure it’s a calendar thing. Like, we’re not going to be able to be consistent for many years playing week by week. Also, it’s not like some time ago that outside of, like, Top-20 players, they were just getting destroyed more."
"Now anybody can win these tournaments. It is like that since couple of years. But I feel like for sure the calendar is not helping. Again, like, we need to switch continents, we need to switch surfaces, we need to switch the balls. Yeah, it’s not easy. I’m not surprised."
The Polish player isn't the only one who thinks that way. Ahead of this swing, Aryna Sabalenka said that she sees these tournaments only as a preparation, and that showed in her results. The Belarusian player won only one of the three matches that she played.
She, too, thinks that the tournaments are not in a great spot. As someone who has reached the Australian Open final in the last three seasons, Sabalenka felt like she didn't have enough time to prepare for these tournaments.
Swiatek, on the other hand, lost relatively early at the Australian Open in the past two seasons, which is maybe also why she was able to perform better than anyone else during the Middle Eastern stretch.
This year, the Pole reached the semi-finals in Melbourne, and she got to experience how that impacted her preparation for tournaments in Doha and Dubai.
"I had the same kind of mindset as like every year, I would say. But the preparation for sure was different. Before I lost in Australia early, so I had time to do some stuff. This year I didn’t."
"Honestly, I’m not that direct usually, but I would blame this performance on the lack of practice before because I didn’t have time."
Both Swiatek and Sabalenka will want to forget their disappointing losses and prepare well for the Sunshine Double. The Indian Wells Open starts on March 5th, 2025.
