By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday January 2, 2022
Poland’s Iga Swiatek will team up with a fellow Polish legend in 2022. The 2020 Roland-Garros champion announced that she is now working with Tomasz Witkorowski, the former coach of Polish legend Agnieska Radwanska.
“For a week I really had my doubts,” Swiatek told WTA Insider of her decision to stop working with longtime coach Piotr Sierzputowski. “I realized that I’ve been working with Piotr for five years or even more. A lot happened since we started. I felt it’s a good time for a next step and a change to maybe, like, reset a little bit. I also didn’t have experience of changing a coach, so I didn’t know how the process looks like.”
More: Swiatek and Sierzputowski Part Ways
Swiatek, who is 20, stressed the importance of working with a Polish coach at this stage of her career. She says speaking the language is important to her, as is having a person in her corner who understands the unique pressure she faces in her home country as one of its biggest star athletes.
“I’m pretty happy that Tomasz was free at the moment because I also feel like I wanted to work with someone who’s from Poland because I think I’m going to be ready for, like, coaches from different countries in maybe one or two years, but now I wanted to work with someone who understands my situation and we can speak the same language so it’s a little bit easier,” she said.
The Pole is currently in Adelaide, where she is seeded fifth and will face a qualifier in her first match of 2022. The World No.9 is coming off a 2021 campaign that saw her go 36-15 with titles in Adelaide and Rome.