Swiatek Slammed For Tactically Exploiting Bathroom Breaks When Losing
WTA
Iga Swiatek was criticized by former World No. 1, Lindsay Davenport, for tactically abusing bathroom breaks.
Tennis is a very complex sport, and as such, it has many different rules, written or unwritten, and many different ways to exploit or abuse those rules that might not be easy to put on paper.
As in every sport, some things are really difficult to describe or find a specific instance for, as many things happen in tennis for the first time even after many, many years that the game has been played.
There are also rules that have been in place for years, but players come to find their benefit after some time and start using that specific rule to their advantage.
Specifically, there are two such rules in tennis that are exploited quite often. As a fast-paced sport, if something goes wrong on the court for a tennis player, they don't really have time to mentally reset.
In a lot of sports, players, or teams, have a chance to use a time-out to discuss the tactics with their team or their coach, or possibly break the momentum of the opposing team or athlete.
In tennis, there is no such thing, except for regular changeovers after every two games. Because of that, many tennis players use either a medical time-out or a bathroom break after a set to disrupt their opponent's rhythm or possibly find their mental peace again.
While using medical time-out without a real injury and with malicious intentions is often seen as gamesmanship for obvious reasons, the same can't be said for bathroom breaks.
The vast majority of tennis players on the ATP and WTA Tours use the bathroom breaks, as they are legal to use between the sets. However, these days, most of the players don't use them to really use the bathroom, but often to change their clothes or mentally regroup.
It's also one of the reasons why Swiatek uses them, and she admitted to doing that in the past, and did so also recently at the 2024 Cincinnati Open when she lost the first set of her quarter-final match against Mirra Andereva 4-6.
The Polish player left the tennis court for some time, after which she returned and outplayed her opponent in the following two sets, beating Andreeva 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 to reach the semi-finals of the WTA 1000 tournament.
However, analyzing the match for the Tennis Channel, two former WTA players were not happy about this. CoCo Vandeweghe was one of the two to call it out, saying that the Polish player uses it solely to disrupt the opponent's rhythm.
"It's been spoken about, Iga's tactic of going to the bathroom, changing her kit, taking her time, always after losing a set. If I was still playing, I would definitely be very aware of it... she's trying to disrupt my rhythm..."
Former World No. 1, Lindsay Davenport, was of a similar opinion, claiming that back when she competed, using bathroom breaks for such purposes wasn't really common, which is why she was surprised by the tactics of the current World No. 1.
"It’s a bad habit that probably should start to be patrolled a little bit by the powers that be. Lose a set you leave the court…never used to be like that. But it happens every time."
Whether using the bathroom break to gain mental advantage is fair play is subjective, but at the moment, the fact is, that doing so isn't against the rules, and tennis players, not just Swiatek, will likely keep using it to their advantage, unless the rules change.
