Iga Swiatek opens up about taking a 'reset' after Australian Open exit

| by Evita Mueller

Iga Swiatek arrived in Melbourne with a lot of expectations and a healthy dose of pressure but she didn't handle it well.

Cracks in the armour started to show even before the event with her crumbling against Jessica Pegula leading up to the event in the United Cup. There was a certain dose of anxiety in the way she approached matches, far removed from the cool display she had last year.

Exactly what I needed was to reset it a little bit, and I knew what I did wrong at the Australian Open and over my whole stay in Australia. I really wanted to focus on getting my expectations lower and not expect from myself that I'm gonna, you know, play perfectly all the time. Because, yeah, last season was so strange, actually, that it can actually mess up with your head a little bit.

Swiatek on Australian Open failure
“Tried hanging in there and scramble for every point” - Bencic on saving 3 championship points
“Tried hanging in there and scramble for every point” - Bencic on saving 3 championship points

A very self-aware individual, Swiatek took time to ponder over the Australian Open finding out what went wrong. She's in a far better headspace right now and is excited about taking the court in Doha once again to see where she stands.

I really wanted to get both my feet on the ground, just focus on hard work and what I have to do on court. I was really happy because we did. I would say even in the last part of the preseason, our practices were really intense and like, the volume was also pretty big. So I feel like I could really focus on the technical stuff and just improve as a player.

Swiatek on getting bettter

Swiatek won the 2022 Doha Open and this year will be a title-defending run. A tricky part of the season is coming up, one where she dominated last year so there are a lot of points to be defended.

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