By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday August 16, 2024
Iga Swiatek had a bucket list meeting with two of tennis’ biggest stars at the Cincinnati Open.
The five-time Grand Slam champion posed for this pic with tennis’ pre-eminent power couple, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, calling herself the “random girl” who just happened to score a pic. Far from Random, Swiatek is already more than half way to matching Agassi’s total Grand Slam haul of eight, though she’ll have to work for a while if she wants to catch up to 22-time Graf, who is the only winner of the Golden Slam in tennis history, and a 22-time major champion.
Swiatek is closing in on Graf in Paris, where the German legend won six of her 22 Slams. Iga has four of those, and became the only woman in history to win four Roland-Garros titles before turning 25 this year in Paris.
When she was asked to name three people she’d like to go to dinner with, Swiatek mentioned Graf as one of them.
The Pole said she’d like to learn more about the mental side of the game from the legend Graf.
"It's hard for me to compare our styles," she said. "Obviously we're playing in different eras of tennis. It's kind of hard to find the same things, especially with her backhand and her slice, her volley, and me not being able to play these kind of things. So more about mentality."
Swiatek is into the quarterfinals at Cincinnati – she will face Mirra Andreeva on Saturday.