Iga Swiatek, already world's No. 1 player, keeps gaining confidence, momentum and trophies
When the world's No. 1 women's tennis player Ash Barty abruptly retired from tennis after winning the 2022 Australian Open, the consensus was that the women's game was wide open and it would take time for the next dominant player to emerge.
It ended up only taking a month.
Iga Swiatek, the 21-year-old Polish star, took the reins and immediately left no doubt who the best player in the women's game was with an unrelenting tear through the sport that included a victory in Indian Wells.
From February to June, Swiatek won six straight tournaments she entered -- The Qatar Open, BNP Paribas Open, Miami Open, Stuttgart Open, Italian Open and the French Open. The 37-match win streak is the longest on the women's tour this century. Naturally, she rose to the No. 1 player perch in April and she hasn't given it back. That's 49 consecutive weeks as the No. 1-ranked player.
In a one-on-one interview with The Desert Sun, she said she felt like the experience she gained in winning at Indian Wells — the second biggest win of her career at that time behind her 2020 French Open title — helped kick-start her remarkable rise.
"I have good memories especially of playing tough matches against tough veterans like (Simona) Halep and (Angelique) Kerber, every day I was playing better and better," Swiatek said. "For sure it gave me a lot of confidence and belief that I can win in many conditions and when I'm tired or if I've been tired and playing for many weeks in a row I know that I can perform at my best level so it gave me a lot of confidence in terms of that."
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She returns to Indian Wells this week as the defending champion, brimming with confidence. She now has 12 career titles, including three Grand Slams. And why wouldn't she be confident hitting the hardcourts in the United States? She won the three biggest events in America last year — Indian Wells, Miami and the U.S. Open.
She said being World No. 1 is a double-edged sword.
"Sometimes I feel like my opponents are trying to play their best tennis against me, and it's tougher for sure," said Swiatek, who begins her quest for back-to-back BNP Paribas Open titles on Friday or Saturday against either Claire Liu of the U.S. or Alison Van Uytvanck of Belgium. "On the other hand, I feel like I can use my experience and my position to kind of put pressure on my opponent so it all depends on the momentum and how the match is going."
The matches have been going just fine for Swiatek.
Her most recent win, a repeat championship at the Qatar Open, was one of the most thorough victories ever on the WTA Tour. She won four matches, and lost a total of five games, a staggering number. She defeated American Danielle Collins 6-0, 6-1, received an injury walkover in the quarterfinals against Belinda Bencic, defeated Veronika Kudermetova 6-0, 6-1 in the semifinals and beat World No. 3 Jessica Pegula 6-3, 6-0 in the final.
True, there was a walkover mixed in, but the previous fewest games a victorious player had lost in WTA history during a title run was 10. The blitzing of the field showed another element Swiatek has that all great champions possess, a killer instinct.
"It showed that the hard work I've been putting in this offseason and after Australia (a fourth-round loss to Elena Rybakina) paid off," Swiatek said. "Also I have confidence in Doha, so for sure it was a great tournament. I used the experience I gained last year having played many matches on the center court, and it felt like I knew the venue and the conditions really good, so when I'm playing the matches I could have more focus from beginning to end."
That could be bad news for her Indian Wells opponents in the coming weeks, because everything she just said about Doha applies to the BNP Paribas Open, too.
But what makes Swiatek so tough? It's hard to peg. She doesn't have a signature style or a go-to weapon. She's just excellent at everything.
Tennis Channel analyst and former player Tracy Austin offered her take on what makes Swiatek special.
“She has such an incredible offensive game, but what compliments that is her defense and her ability to push her opponents back on their heels," Austin told The Desert Sun. "If she gets into trouble, she has such great athleticism that she’s quick to get to the corners, quick to get out of the corners and can extend points. So, she’s an exciting athlete to watch."
And Austin said Swiatek's game is perfectly tailored to Indian Wells, so it's not a surprise she's had success here.
“Her ball has a heaviness to it. It jumps off the court with topspin off her forehand and that’s accentuated in the desert,” she said.
So let's add it all up. A game perfectly suited for desert conditions. The confidence instilled by being the defending champ. Three weeks after one of the most dominating victories in WTA Tour history. It's hard not to consider Swiatek one of the heaviest favorites entering this tournament in a long time.
If she were to pull off a repeat title, it would be an exceedingly rare accomplishment. Remarkably, only one woman has ever won back-to-back singles titles at Indian Wells, and that was Martina Navratilova in 1990 and 1991.
"For me, it doesn't matter if I'm defending champion or not, because in that case whenever you are it was from a year ago always, so a lot can happen during a year," Swiatek said. "For sure there's going to be a lot of pressure from the media and people asking about that but for me, it doesn't matter because to me any girl can win any tournament, and you have to really be on your toes and be ready and it doesn't really matter what happened last year."
Shad Powers is a columnist for The Desert Sun. Reach him at shad.powers@desertsun.com.
Four more things about Iga Swiatek
Country pride: Swiatek is the only player from Poland, man or woman, to ever win a Grand Slam title. She has three: French Open 2020 and 2022, U.S. Open 2022.
Streaking: Her 49 straight weeks as No. 1 is the fourth-longest streak ever for a player the first time they reached No. 1.
Sunny days: She is the youngest woman to complete "The Sunshine Double" — winning at Indian Wells and Miami in the same year — accomplishing the feat at age 20 last year.
Speaking up: Swiatek is not afraid to offer her opinion as one of the faces of the WTA Tour (known this year as the Hologic WTA Tour), to promote the sport she loves. After her win in Doha, she was asked about the WTA as it celebrates its 50th anniversary this year: "For sure I would like to see WTA kind of, I don't know, expanding business-wise, getting more popular, kind of cutting the difference between WTA and ATP in terms of prize money differences, and also attracting fans as well. Our tennis brings the same emotions as men's tennis, so I think there is something you can find in women's tennis that you're not going to find on the ATP. Right now, after a couple of years of hearing that we're not consistent, we are actually consistent. There are many top players who are playing great on most of the tournaments. I think fans can choose their favorite and really cheer for us."
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: BNP Paribas Open: Iga Swiatek on top of the sport as she returns to Indian Wells
