By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday June 29, 2024
Much has been made about Iga Swiatek’s tricky Wimbledon draw, and the World No.1’s lack of preparation heading into these Championships. But Swiatek herself isn’t getting sucked into the conversation. On Saturday during her media day press conference the five-time major champion says she is just focusing on her first-round matchup.
“I only know my first-round opponent and that's all,” Swiatek said.
Swiatek harbors no illusions about the difficulty of the task that lies ahead, however.
She has never been beyond the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, and the grass is her least natural surface.
She says Wimbledon is always a bit chaotic because of the short lead up, with just three weeks intervening between the Roland-Garros final (where she is a fixture) and first ball at SW19.
A reporter mentioned that there have been seven different Wimbledon women’s singles champions in the last seven seasons, and wondered what the reason for that might be.
“I feel like it's a really tricky tournament,” Swiatek replied. “It's not like you can kind of build up your shape and then peak at Wimbledon. There aren't so many tournaments on grass. Sometimes this tournament looks a little bit different. Players that are also sometimes underdogs can win it, I feel. The chance is bigger.”
Though she admits she needs more matches on grass, Swiatek elected not to play a warmup event on the surface this year because she doesn’t want to burnout down the stretch in 2024. With the Paris Olympics and the US Open still to come, she needs time to decompress.
There is one bonus to not playing a tournament on grass prior to Wimbledon, however: it allowed her to show up to the grounds even earlier.
“I'm happy that I came here early because there is a huge difference between the grass that we have in our own country, for example, and here,” she said. “Day after day I feel like I'm getting more rhythm and I can really feel the ball better. I feel good.
“For sure we approached this year a little bit differently basically because of the amount of matches that I played in the first part of the season. I could probably squeeze in one more tournament before Wimbledon, but I don't know if I would be able to physically be in a good shape till the end of the year. You kind of have to choose what's better also for the future. I think that was a smarter decision this year.”
Hoping the Serve Is A Solution
Swiatek, who holds a 9-4 lifetime record at Wimbledon, believes that her new and improved serve could buy her more free points and thus increase her chance for success in 2024.
“That was also one of the goals, to sometimes win kind of by serving and making pressure with that,” she said. “I managed to do that on other surfaces. Hopefully on this surface, it's going to be also similar. Here it's even more important to serve well, the first serve. It seemed fine in practices, so I'm going to try it out in matches with some stress coming in and everything. Hopefully this progress that I've made is going to pay off.”
With a tricky draw, and not much time to prepare, Swiatek hopes to rely on her mental toughness and her ability to adapt to the surface better than ever. It all starts on Tuesday with a first-round matchup with Sofia Kenin. Let the games begin…
“I guess it comes down more to the mental side, I would say, how you're going to be able to adjust to this surface,” she said. “The player that does it better is going to win.”