Iga Swiatek is getting blasted by tennis fans, annoyed by her not following the pace of play initiated by the serving player.
Iga Swiatek has a habit of pausing play for a few seconds to gather herself. She generally does it by lifting her racquet up, which is either noticed by the serving player or the umpire who calls on the player to wait before serving.
It's not something she does all the time, but she does it a few times during a match, with some fans pointing out that she tends to do it often when her opponent is either facing a break point or even a match point.
One instance of such a match point happened recently at the Cincinnati Masters during her match against Marketa Vondrousova. Swiatek got a time violation for pausing play despite the serving player being ready to play.
The returner should usually adapt to the pace of the serving player, but the Pole doesn't do it all the time. The justification was that she needed a breather though she admitted that the umpire followed the rules strictly when issuing the code violation.
After the recent incident, Swiatek has been under fire on social media again. By now, it's simply part of her game, and it remains to be seen how umpires will continue to handle it. Fans don't like it and have been voicing their frustration on social media.
This is not the only thing that rubbed tennis fans the wrong way when it comes to Swiatek. She had the very prominent controversy of waving her hands during play a few times, which even got some negative reactions from former players. Some of the fans suggested that she does it on purpose to distract her opponents.
"Look at the score lines every single time. It's been an obvious tactic for a long time that she wants her opponents to really linger in the pressure of the point they're about to play. I noticed it a long time ago along with everyone else but she never gets called out for it so it's continued."
"This is literally a part of her game - she almost always tries to dictate when the server is allowed to serve and it shouldn't be allowed. When the opponent is serving, you go when they're basically ready to serve not when you're ready to receive the serve. Obviously, there's scenarios where this can't always be true but the number of times l've watched an Iga match and she's done this is a bit ridiculous. It can't be a coincidence this point."
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