Swiatek seeks to add a Slam, erase an asterisk

When the number 1 was first placed next to Iga Swiatek in the WTA world rankings last March, the Pole had won her second title on the bounce at Indian Wells. Still, that the then top-ranked Ashleigh Barty’s sudden retirement handed it to her would make the strange coronation carry an asterisk with it.

Had Swiatek truly earned it? Was she, in its most basic sense, the world’s best active female singles tennis player? Nine months on, that question has been emphatically erased by the eight titles and two Grand Slams from the Pole’s dance of dominance in 2022.

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Now for another question: how far can Swiatek go with this dominance?

Part to that answer could surface over the next couple of weeks at the Australian Open starting in Melbourne on Monday. It’s where she kicks off her season-opening Grand Slam as the undisputed world No 1 and the largely unchallenged woman to beat from last season.

The 21-year-old, though, has been rather underwhelming at the Australian Open, and will seek joy from the Happy Slam to continue her stretch of supremacy.

A second-round exit in her first appearance at Melbourne Park in 2019 was followed by a couple of departures from the fourth round. A more positive semi-final run unfolded last year before Swiatek was packed off by Danielle Collins 6-4, 6-1 in what she would later describe as the “fastest balls” she had ever faced.

Swiatek has never entirely felt at home in those faster courts Down Under blazing in the sweltering Aussie summer. Take those three-set tussles with unseeded Sorana Cirstea and Kaia Kanepi en route to her semifinals show last year and contrast them with the breezy strolls to the French Open titles. Or the 6-2, 6-2 battering she received—the kind she’d usually hand it to opponents last year—at the hands of American Jessica Pegula at the United Cup earlier this month that brought out her tears on court again.

We haven’t seen them since her second-round defeat at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and after a loss at the WTA Finals later that year. It’s when Swiatek felt, in her own words for The Players’ Tribune, being judged, “exhausted mentally and physically” and “ashamed” of her reactions as a champion, as the 2020 Rolland Garros winner was then with little to back it up.

But when Barty chose to walk away from professional tennis at 25, Swiatek gushed with emotions from an unlikely connect of choosing to do things “differently”.

“And sometimes the best solution is not giving a sh*t, honestly,” Swiatek, the WTA Player of the Year in 2022, wrote in her essay published on Thursday. “I am sorry to curse, but if there is some secret to my success in the last year, it’s giving myself that freedom to not care what people think.

“That’s what led me to winning another Grand Slam and the third one. That’s what led me to No 1. Letting go.”

And letting it rip. A 21st century record 37-match win streak that began in February and lasted till the Wimbledon in July, a second French Open title in June, a first US Open crown in September. Her third Grand Slam title in New York gave her the belief that she had the game to succeed beyond the red dirt, and the hard-court titles of 2022 in Qatar, Indian Wells, Miami, New York and San Diego only reiterated that.

“For me, it’s all about staying kind of solid and actually not changing a lot,” Swiatek said on Saturday. “It worked, so why would I change a lot?”

While the game’s there to rise Down Under, it’s about whether Swiatek can also carry that mental freedom into the new season starting with the Australian Open litmus test.

If she does, there could still be no stopping Swiatek, the world No 1. No asterisk attached.