Iga Swiatek says losing her No.1 position has removed some baggage off her shoulders as she switches her focus away from chasing after ranking points.
The Pole held the top spot on the WTA rankings for 75 consecutive weeks before her reign was ended at the US Open by Aryna Sabalenka. At the Grand Slam, she was knocked out in the fourth round by Jelena Ostapenko. Since then, her only other tournament appearance was at the Pan Pacific Open where she was knocked out in the quarter-finals by Veronika Kudermetova who went on to claim the title.
Swiatek is hoping to get some momentum back on the Tour at the upcoming China Open which will be the first WTA event where she will not be the top seed for over a year. A position she seems to be relishing.
“I think it’s a little bit easier to come back to the mindset of chasing somebody because that’s what we’ve been doing our whole lives,” wtatennis.com quoted Swiatek as telling reporters in Beijing. “There’s only one person who’s at No.1. I think this was harder to get used to last season.
“But honestly, it doesn’t really matter for me because after US Open, I knew I’m going to drop to second position. I stopped thinking about rankings at all because I felt like there’s some baggage off my shoulders. I could focus more on just working and kind of getting back to the more peaceful and normal rhythm of practicing.”
As it currently stands, Swiatek is 1071 points behind Sabalenka in the standings. However, she appears to be in no hurry to reclaim the position. instead, she intends to tune up her game which could include her approaching the remaining matches with different tactics.
“My main goal is to do some stuff differently on court in terms of the technique and tactics, to develop as a player, not really chase points or rankings.” She said.
“I realized how much work I have to do in pre-season because there are a lot of things I want to improve. My coach also has a good plan. Sometimes it’s not possible to do all of that in two weeks. But we kind of started doing it.”
So far this year, Swiatek has won 56 Tour-level matches which is more than any other WTA player. She is also one of two women to have already won four titles in 2023 alongside Coco Gauff.
Swiatek’s opening match in Beijing will be against Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo on Monday.
