Iga Swiatek is already one of the best players in the world, but that didn't stop her from trying to improve in the off-season.
One common theme with Swiatek anytime she speaks about her tennis is the desire to improve. It's never about the results for her it's all about becoming a better player by improving every part of her game gradually.
You could say it's the philosophy of Novak Djokovic, who is widely hailed as a player who never really stopped improving during his career, and it's considered crucial for his success.
One of the things she worked on this year was the drop shot, a glaring weakness identified by many, but also the serve and volleys. Her serve was not considered a huge weakness, but she planned on addressing it for a long time.
"We've been planning to do that for a long time now. It's hard to find the proper time, especially when we kind of wanted to do it last year, but I won suddenly US Open."
"We were like, Why would we do it after winning a Grand Slam? The timing was pretty tricky. We also tried a little bit to change something after Wimbledon last year."
What changed this time around for her to really commit to it was determination. She elected to see it through fully and adopted the new movement without going back to her old one.
As she explained, it's not a huge change, and it didn't really impact her tennis negatively, as her start this year was pretty spectacular.
This time I knew I was kind of ready to just stick with it and not come back to my older movement, my previous movement. I mean, it's not a big change. Like, I'm only changing my swing here. Up there everything is the same. It was enough for me to have couple weeks, yeah, to be fully committed, not let myself go back to the old movement.
We'll see how it goes at the Australian Open, where she'll certainly face a few really good returners.
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