Swiatek Needs To Add One Shot 'To Go Another Level' Says Doubles Legend
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16-time Grand Slam men's doubles champion Todd Woodbridge has named the shot Iga Swiatek needs to add to make her game even more formidable.
Swiatek played her first match of the 2025 WTA season in Poland's United Cup tie against Norway. She hopes to help her country go a step further than last year's tournament, which ended in a narrow loss in the final to Team Germany.
The 2025 United Cup is her third professional tournament with new coach Wim Fissette. Swiatek began working with Naomi Osaka's two-time coach in October after splitting with Tomasz Wiktorowski.
Their first event as a partnership was at the 2024 WTA Finals. Although Swiatek won two of her three round-robin matches, she did not qualify for the semifinals, becoming just the fourth player in the last twenty years not to do so with two victories in the group stage.
Swiatek had not played for nearly two months before the WTA Finals, missing the entire Asian swing in September and October. It was revealed on November 28th that she tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine from an out-of-competition sample submitted in August.
Further testing proved that melatonin tablets she bought were contaminated with trimetazidine. That led to the provisional suspension she was given on September 12th being lifted 22 days later on October 4th.
Swiatek accepted a one-month suspension from the International Tennis Integrity Agency, most of which she served provisionally. However, the World Anti-Doping Agency could still decide to appeal, as it did in Jannik Sinner's case.
The anxiety and stress caused by the doping case might have impacted Fissette's ability to work on Swiatek's game. He has called the Pole the best athlete in women's tennis, but thinks there are areas in the world No. 2's game that can be improved.
Speaking on an episode of The Tennis Podcast (formerly the AO show) Woodbridge outlined why he thinks Swiatek and Fissette should focus on developing her slice backhand to take her game to the next level.
"There's a new coaching team [now including Wim Fissette], and hopefully in the off-season they've been running over to the backhand corner and hitting some slice backhands – a defensive shot to get back into play. [It’s] one shot required for her to go another level here, and that's to get a defensive ball, to get it back into play, and get back neutral into the court."
"If she can have been working on that, I promise you you'll see a different look from Iga. It will allow her to use her forehand better, and set things up. And she doesn't have that shot. Doesn't use it. That's all.”
Former US Open champion singles champion Samantha Stosur argued on the same podcast that Swiatek might not need a slice backhand because her open stance backhand is so exceptional.
While Woodbridge agrees about how good that shot is, the doubles legend still believes there are circumstances where Swiatek could use a slice backhand to keep herself in points.
"She trained to go out there to the backhand corner on the left foot, open stance, and be able to muscle the ball, with two hands, back. That was her defensive backhand. That's good."
“But what it doesn't do is allow you to take pace off, float the ball a little deeper, so that you get an extra meter to get back to the centre of the court. It also doesn't allow you to hit a shorter ball, to bring your opponent forward slightly."
"So really it's [about] just adding to her repertoire, and if you think about how good she's been, and then you go, 'well, if she can learn that, and add that, oh, here we go'. "If I was in that [new coaching] team, that would be my focus. Because then she can use her forehand way better on this court at the Australian Open."
