Iga Swiatek and Agnieszka Radwanska thrilled the crowd in Krakow with an exciting charity match that collected €422,000, which will be donated to the victims of the War in Ukraine.
Iga Swiatek has been deeply affected by what has been going on in Ukraine in the past months. She is one of the highly emotional players on the WTA Tour, and Swiatek has spoken about the topic multiple times, hoping and praying for an end, but unfortunately, it has yet to happen.
To do something to help hte situation, Swiatek organized a charity match in Krakow with her idol Agnieszka Radwanska. Radwanska was one of the best players on the WTA Tour when Swiatek was growing up.
The current World No. 1 player was born in 2001, and she was 11 when Radwanska stood in the Wimbledon final in 2012, and reached her career-high World No. 2 rank, something that Swiatek surpassed in her career.
Alongside Radwanska, Swiatek also invited a couple of Ukrainian tennis players, namely Elina Svitolina, who served as the match umpire, and ATP player Sergiy Stakhovsky, who has been very outspoken since the war started.
The match proved to be a great success, and Swiatek was very happy about how it turned out to be. The event collected €422,000 for the victims, and Swiatek again spoke about the war.
"This is a very important issue for me. I never imagined that the war could be so close. I was born at a time when our part of Europe was quite peaceful. I noticed that at first interest in what was happening in Ukraine appeared in the tennis world, many players put on ribbons in the colours of this country."
"But with time it changed, the ribbons disappeared after two or three matches. My ribbon will remain. Many players do not want to comment on the war, I respect that, because everyone does as they see fit."