Respected tennis coach Rick Macci used to coach Serena Williams, so he's seen a fair share of excellent tennis players, but to him, Iga Swiatek on clay is something else.
We've known about Swiatek and clay ever since she, as a teenager, won the Covid Roland Garros that was played after the US Open. It was a stunning run with tremendous victories over players like Simona Halep en route to her maiden Grand Slam victory.
Fast forward a few years and Swiatek is up to three Roland Garros trophies, having won the event earlier this year, and she's even better now. The crucial part of her clay success is her consistency from the baseline as well as stellar movement.
Macci was a guest on the Match Point Canada tennis podcast, where he talked a bit about the Polish superstar.
Well, first off, Iga [Swiatek] has proven herself with four Slams, you know, mentally she has proven herself and she's not going anywhere. I think she is a cut above, no one's going undefeated, okay, but I think she is much better mentally than the rest of the field. [Aryna] Sabalenka can be in and out, [Elena] Rybakina can kind of be sprayed around a little bit. [Coco Gauff's] forehand is a little dodgy.
Despite seeing Swiatek as above the rest of the field, Macci believes the sport to be very fluid. He wouldn't surprised to see it quickly change with some other players emerging. It's kind of the nature of tennis but especially women's tennis, where the field looks much more even compared to the men's side of the sport.
But I think it's so fluid, the women's game because there's not a lot of people who have been there done that. You know what I am saying, [players] that have that pedigree and won two or three or four or five Grand Slams. So every female goes in there, has a shot.
Maybe not on clay, because on clay Iga is something like [Martina] Hingis on steroids, she just carves off angles and carves you up like a Thanksgiving turkey. She is by far the best, but those would be the people I would keep an eye on. But it's so wide open, and all the females know that.
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