The candor and innocence that he shows in his statements is directly proportional to the competitive fierceness that he displays on the track. Every Swiateknew champion of US Open 2022, has reached the top to stay and has all the necessary weapons to do so, building not just a solid building, but a monument to tennis, daily sacrifice and passion for this game. There are situations in life that are unfathomable, vicissitudes that are difficult to explain and that escape logic, such as the lack of preponderance in the media, public appreciation and media attention of a 21-year-old girl who already has three titles to her name and who It conveys the feeling of being able to add with an unimaginable recurrence for many other contemporaries who deflated after occupying covers or changed the sneakers for those of couché paper. Swiatek has walked away from that with the ease of a girl who just wants to play tennis.
“Every time I finish a tennis match it is inevitable for me not to cry, win or lose”. With these words she described the Polish mental martyrdom that she suffered for months, after jumping to the fore with that title at Roland Garros 2020 that she placed her figure in a context for which she was not prepared. Far from fleeing or insisting on squeezing that goose that lays the golden eggs that being a Grand Slam champion means, Iga sought reconciliation with this sport and the balance between her excessive ambition and the performance of an elite athlete. Her demand is marked by herself, her problems are created by her mind, which is also the one who takes her out of them. When she understood the complexity of this and the need not to demand so much of herself, she found the way to a glory that she savors at every step, enjoying the process without obsessing over the results and emerging stronger from every setback.
Swiatek hired a sports psychologist to try to learn to manage his emotions and channel winning desire
Winning is always impossible, no matter how much throughout this season he has conveyed the feeling that victory was an inescapable outcome when he went out to compete. That mobility of legs with which it seems that he can generate energy, are turbines that drive his game and make him lethal. A diabolical backhand, a right capable of printing effects rarely seen on the female circuit and, above all, an ability to isolate himself from everything that happens around him and center his world between a few lines. She has her feet on the ground, she has a powerful feeling of rootedness in her country that makes her a local heroine and she shows a naturalness that dazzles anyone. Her frenetic pace on her track presents her as a player from the future to blow up all the forecasts of the present.
The fact of having hired a sports psychologist and talking openly about it, without considering herself a champion of anything, but normalizing it and arguing the reasons that have led to her hiring, speaks very clearly of how her shyness and introspection are overcome by her willingness to improve. If she is able to understand that being number 1 does not force her to always win and that losing games, like the ones this summer, is not a drama, we could be facing a tennis player who marks an era. Banalize defeats without this meaning wanting to win less; that is the emotional balance that she can reach and that would become the definitive launch pad for her career. While she looks for him, she can only enjoy her tennis as much as she does practicing this sport. The sky is the limit for her. There are three and she gives the feeling that the account will continue to increase. There are Every Swiatek for a while.
