Serena Williams' former coach, Rennae Stubbs, is confident that Iga Swiatek will thrive with new coach Wim Fissette.
Swiatek's next tournament is the 2024 WTA Finals, starting November 2nd. The year-end No. 1 ranking between her and Aryna Sabalenka will be decided at the tournament in Riyadh.
The event will also be Swiatek's first appearance since splitting from her longtime coach, Tomasz Wiktorowski, earlier this month. During a nearly three-year spell with Wiktorowski, she won the 2022 US Open and three French Opens.
Rumors emerged that a rift behind the scenes led to the Polish coach not wanting to work with Swiatek anymore. However, Wiktorowski dismissed that possibility and hit out at those spreading fake news.
After careful consideration, Swiatek appointed Naomi Osaka's former coach, Wim Fissette, as her new coach. Osaka ended her second spell with Fissette after the US Open, replacing him with Patrick Mouratoglou.
Fissette helped Osaka to win the 2020 US Open and 2021 Australian Open during their first spell together. He returned as her coach at the start of 2024 but could not inspire the 27-year-old to reach her past level.
The Belgian coach also helped Angelique Kerber win Wimbledon in 2018, and Kim Clijsters secured two US Open titles in 2009 and 2010 under his guidance. Those may have been factors in Swiatek's decision to appoint him.
Despite still being a relatively young coach at the age of 44, Victoria Azarenka, Qinwen Zheng, Simona Halep, Petra Kvitova, and Sara Errani are other players Fissette has worked with.
Speaking on her podcast, Stubbs says she is convinced that Swiatek will succeed with Fissette and thinks she could benefit from the Belgian's more positive attitude during matches compared to Wiktorowski.
LListen what do I think about how it’s going to go... I think it’ll go great because Wim will come in with new ideas and fresh ideas, he’s a little bit and not a little bit he’s a lot more upbeat and a lot more positive than Tomasz [Wiktorowski]."
"Working with Iga or something ‘cause Iga clearly when she’s on the court, she gets very stressed and all the things you see and you have to be able to monitor that. I think Iga will probably do great and will look like a legend."
However, despite insisting she was not taking a dig at Fissette, Stubbs stated that Fissette working with Swiatek after an unsuccessful period with Osaka continues a trend of men failing upwards.
"I mean, are we surprised by this? Again this is not a slight on Wim Fissette, I want to get that straight. The fact that these men just fail up, it just makes me laugh. I’m not saying fail like failed, but they get fired and then they get picked up in one week to work with somebody else. It makes me laugh so much."
"They’ve [the coaches] all got agents. They contact the agents, the agents contact their agents. These coaches have agents and as soon as they’re about to get fired and they know they’re getting fired, they’re onto every other agent."