Iga Swiatek is pleading again with the tennis authorities to make some changes to the calendar as the world No. 1 believes tennis has “the toughest schedule” in all sports and that the worst thing is that it is somehow “getting crazier.”
Over the last couple of years, the talks about the calendar have become a regular occurrence and they usually resurface whenever the time comes for a busy part of the season. And since some players have changed three surfaces in the last month – Wimbledon, the Paris Olympics, and now the North American hard-court swing – the chatter about the demands of the schedule is again on.
And Swiatek, who is one of the players who changed all three surfaces this summer, took a moment in her pre-tournament press conference at the WTA 1000 tournament in Cincinnati to raise certain concerns.
“Our calendar is crazy, probably the toughest one in sports. There are sports that are really tough because, physically, you might get beat up. But most sports have four months off, sometimes even six. Our schedule is crazy, and it’s getting more crazy every year, which is scary. You just have to train wisely,” Swiatek stated.
While this was a big statement and claim from Swiatek, it wasn’t really anything surprising considering that the 23-year-old Pole has been saying for quite some time that it’s time to relax the tennis schedule and make it easier for the players.
Last year, Swiatek missed the Billie Jean King Cup Finals – and when announcing her withdrawal – she criticized the schedule. In a lengthy statement at the time, the Pole blamed it on the BJK Cup FInals taking place instantly after the WTA Finals.
However, it’s not only Swiatek speaking out on the matter as many players over the last couple of years have publicly stated that it’s time for tennis to go from an 11-month calendar to a more relaxed calendar.
Swiatek missed Toronto but gets back in action in Cincinnati
After the Olympics, some of the biggest names didn’t go to Toronto and Swiatek was one of them. Instead, she took a couple of days to rest after her bronze result before resuming practice and trying to fix certain things on the court.
“It was pretty stressful and it wasn’t easy. But I’m happy that I could leave Paris with a medal and with a lot of knowledge about myself. The most important thing for me was to learn from this experience. I was proud of myself and I was happy that I could deal with all this pressure and still get a medal. It wasn’t like a normal tournament, for sure,” Swiatek said.
“I literally felt after the Olympics that I need to kind of reset and also just focus on getting my technique back together and just grinding on court. Here is the perfect place to do it. It feels a little bit less crazy, but on the other hand, even before the tournament, there are many people and a lot of fans. So you still feel that it’s an important tournament anyway.”
Swiatek doesn’t have big expectations in Cincinnati
Swiatek may have been the best player in the game since 2022 but it is no secret that North American hard-court swing has been a tricky part of the year for her since she has yet to win Montreal/Toronto or Cincinnati. And at the start of her Cincinnati campaign, the five-time Grand Slam champion wants to use this as “a practice tournament.”
“I know that the first tournament on hard court is not going to be easy. So I’m going to try to treat it as a practice tournament, but not in a way that I don’t care – more in a way that I want to implement all the stuff that I practiced on. I think it’s the best approach for me now. We’re taking it easy, doing everything step by step. For sure, it’s not going to be perfect from the beginning but I had a couple days to really get used to the surface, so I’m trying to do the best job possible every day and entering the court next day knowing I can do something better,” Swiatek explained.
It was only last year when Swiatek had her first deep Cincinnati run. And interestingly, it ended in the semifinal with a loss to Coco Gauff – it marked the first and lone time that the Pole lost to the 20-year-old American.
This year, Swiatek returned as the top seed and it remains to be seen how far can she go in Cincinnati without having big expectations for the week.