No much less an authority on clay-court tennis than Chris Evert thinks her file of seven French Open championships could possibly be surpassed by Iga Swiatek.
“Completely,” Evert, a member of the Worldwide Tennis Corridor of Fame, stated in a telephone interview. “Iga is a participant on a mission. She’s extra centered. She doesn’t get upset in any respect when she’s shedding. She simply has all of the elements to be a champion. She actually does. She checks all of the bins — the intangibles and the tangibles.”
Swiatek has been No. 1 within the WTA rankings for many of the previous two years and can search her fourth championship at Roland Garros — and fifth Grand Slam trophy total — when play begins on the clay-court main event Sunday.
The 22-year-old from Poland tries to change into the primary girl to win three consecutive French Open titles since Justine Henin collected a trio from 2005 to 2007. And Swiatek is coming off a uncommon feat; she gained her previous two tournaments on clay at Madrid and Rome, the primary girl to drag off that clay double since Serena Williams did it 11 years in the past.
Swiatek, whose first trophy in Paris got here at age 19 in 2020, appears constructed for the floor the French name ‘terre battue’.
“I simply suppose Iga is probably the most stable of all gamers on the market. She doesn’t appear to have any massive holes in her sport,” stated Evert, who collected her prizes at Roland Garros within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties and closed her profession with 18 Grand Slam titles, the identical quantity as her nice on-court rival, Martina Navratilova. “She’s a superb front-runner. As soon as she will get going, and he or she’s successful, she has that confidence.”
As Evert famous, Swiatek is as a lot a marvel mentally as she is proficient bodily. A few of the credit score for that certainly goes to Daria Abramowicz, the sports activities psychologist who travels the circuit with Swiatek and is a continuing presence at matches and at information conferences.
“I’m at all times form of making an attempt to remain current and do the identical work it doesn’t matter what stage of the match I’m in,” Swiatek stated. “So I believe that’s the principle factor.”
She is 38-4 with 4 titles in 2024.
That form of constant excellence is ‘unimaginable’, and Swiatek is ‘nice for the game’, stated four-time main champion Naomi Osaka, who may face her within the second spherical of the French Open.
Osaka additionally praised Swiatek for enjoying effectively week in and week out, ‘one thing that I truthfully can’t consider, or can’t fathom, again after I was No. 1 for like 5 seconds’.
There is no such thing as a sense of complacency with Swiatek. Nor does she — outwardly, anyway — get too down after a poor match. No victory — or loss, for that matter — appears to linger along with her for too lengthy. It’s merely on to the subsequent one.
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“Even when I win, it doesn’t stick in my head,” Swiatek stated. “I have fun for someday, then I’m off to a different event, in my head, even.”
Opponents speak in regards to the problem of looking for a weak point on courtroom in opposition to her. They usually uniformly describe a relentless sense of feeling as if Swiatek places them underneath strain, by no means permitting a second to discover a means out.
“She’s unimaginable. Her consistency and her focus is sort of spectacular. The way in which she’s been form of dealing with her profession, to go from one event and maintain the main focus, for her, works very well,” stated Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Australian Open champion and former top-ranked participant.
As for what kind of success Swiatek might need because the years go by, “On the long run, it’s onerous to foretell. The tour is lengthy. Gamers have accidents, and so on., and so on., so I don’t wish to guess what will occur,” Azarenka stated.
“However for the time being, she positively totally deserves to be No. 1, with the best way she’s taking part in.”