The women’s tennis number one Iga Swiatek admitted that she has been under a lot of pressure over the past two weeks. The Pole dropped out in the fourth round of the Australian Open after losing by 0-2 (4:6, 4:6) to Wimbledon 2022 champion Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan.
“For sure the last two weeks have been pretty tough for me”, said Iga Swiatek at the post-match press conference. “Today I felt like I didn’t have the energy to fight anymore… I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments. Maybe I wanted too much to succeed. I will try to relax a little bit. I felt pressure and I felt like ‘I don’t want to lose’ instead of ‘I want to win’. So, that’s the basis I have to focus on for the next few weeks”, added she.
The top-seeded Iga Swiatek did not expect her lackluster performance at Wimbledon last year to set a precedent for how she would bounce back from today’s defeat.
“I just spent too much energy before the start and in the early days of the tournament to worry about it… It’s a different period of time for me. Before the US, I could actually kind of expect it because I played pretty poorly in the Toronto and Cincinnati tournaments . It helped me adjust and just start the US Open without expecting too much of myself. It was different here, so I don’t connect the two things at all. I can’t compare this situation to my loss at Wimbledon either”, said Iga Swiatek.
