Iga Świątek is not back, because the tennis she wants to play never left her
PARIS – It has been a good week to be Iga Świątek.The four-time French Open champion is back on her beloved red clay. The sun has been shining. The scorching heat at Roland Garros has made the topspin on her forehand even more potent than usual.The fates have been on her side, too, in cahoots with the weather. She avoided a bear trap of a third-round matchup against her personal Achilles heel, Jelena Ostapenko, after the Latvian lost to Świątek’s compatriot Magda Linette.Later that same day, the draw opened further when No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina was upset by Yulia Starodubtseva in the second round, meaning the high seed in Rybakina’s quarter of the draw – Świątek’s hypothetical semifinal opponent – is No. 8 Mirra Andreeva.Most importantly, after feeling lost in the tennis wilderness for a spell earlier this year, Świątek is feeling clear-headed and balanced enough to take advantage of whatever unfolds in front of her.She’s through to the fourth round of her first Grand Slam tournament with her new coach of two months, Francisco Roig. There, she faces No. 15 seed Marta Kostyuk, against whom she has a 3-0 record.“I feel like the decision-making has been better, and that’s an improvement,” Świątek said Friday. “I mean, after how I played in the States, honestly, anything better is positive.”Across two WTA 1000 tournaments, the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif. and the Miami Open, Świątek went on a brief, impactful run. She lost the world No. 2 ranking to Rybakina after exiting Indian Wells in the quarterfinals. Then, in Florida, she suffered a shocking second-round loss to Linette, her countrywoman, after receiving a first-round bye.Then the world No. 50, Linette broke Świątek’s streak of 73 opening-match wins, which dated back to 2021.It proved a tipping point for Świątek, who said after that tennis felt “complicated” in her head, a flashing red warning sign for a player whose best victories had always featured a fluid balance of offense and defense. Instead of adapting during matches, she’d freeze, and, more often than not, default to overhitting.Swiatek appeared caught between two styles. There was the direct, simple, first-strike tennis preached by Tomasz Wiktorowski, with whom Świątek won four of her Grand Slam titles. And there was the more patient, variety-laced style that she first played when she burst onto the scene in 2020 by winning this tournament, and which she had started to reintroduce with the support of coach Wim Fisette, who replaced Wiktorowski toward the end of the 2024 season.Świątek reached the 2025 Australian Open semifinals and won Wimbledon that summer, but her successes were always intermixed with similar losses. Her serve didn’t earn her free points, so she had to grind through almost every point as a rally. Pressure would build on her baseline game, errors would inevitably arrive, and the cycle would spiral Świątek into lopsided scorelines in deciding sets.Świątek fired Fisette three days after the loss to Linette in March. She said her goal in the next chapter was to become a “wall on the court.”She turned to tennis’s great manufacturer of sturdy ones: Spain.Świątek spent a few healing days in Mallorca, training at her idol Rafael Nadal’s academy. Nadal was present for two of her practices, and she hired one of his former coaches, Roig, who she said integrated with her team well with his distinct sense of humor. He took her to play golf at the Madrid Open, and tore his Achilles tendon playing a volleying game with her during a public practice at the Italian Open in Rome. He invited her entire team to the red-carpet premiere of the new Netflix docuseries about Nadal, only to realize he had the wrong month – after everyone had gotten all dressed up to go out.“He is really a positive person. He can talk to everybody, and he’s really relaxed, but he can easily switch to, you know, being a person that is decisive in the team and also a person that needs to tell me what to do,” Świątek said Friday. “So it’s a nice mix. There is a really good balance in that, I feel.”Their shared goal isn’t so different from what Świątek and Fisette were trying to achieve. Świątek has to evolve, now that the rest of women’s tennis has caught up to the powerful style that once allowed her to dominate.But Roig’s method has made a difference. They’ve been training differently than she did with Fisette — longer rallies became the norm in practice, and Świątek’s confidence in her decision-making has rebounded.“You need to have this feeling in your head that you’re not going to miss a ball,” Swiatek said in April, at the Madrid Open. “I feel, honestly, this Spanish type of coaching really helps that. … After these practices in Mallorca, I’ve been able to not make any rash decisions.”Roig adjusted her footwork, too, instructing her to stay higher in her stance and emphasizing the importance of staying upright, not leaning too far forward or back.Świątek said she’d felt unstable in her base over the past few months, another warning sign for a player who has perhaps the best footwork in the game.“I felt like I wanted to be more ready and slower, but that made me quite heavy on the ground, so you need to find a balance,” Świątek said. “Tennis is about smoothness and being fluid, adapting to different kind of situations. When you’re just stuck with your legs and trying to be low, you’re not going to react that fast.”Swiatek is adapting better now – or at least, she doesn’t find the puzzle of adapting as rattling as she did a few months ago.At the French Open, her second-round match against the world No. 35 Sara Bejlek was a win in straight sets which Świątek dictated from first ball to last, but it was hardly clean. She had 38 unforced errors and struggled with closing out points assertively. She felt she had too many opportunities to attack against Bejlek, which made it hard to determine when she should stay back and wait or go for the crushing blow.When Świątek described that challenge in her news conference, the change in her since March became clear. Then, she was agonized. Now, she is breezy.“I didn’t mind,” Świątek said of how unpredictable she found Bejlek’s style. “I wanted to be flexible and adjust and play my game. Sometimes I had some moments where the mistakes happened, but at the end I feel like I was the one that had control over the game, and it was up to me if I’m going to finish this points or make a mistake. In important moments, I was focused and patient enough to play solid.”Her third-round win Friday provided a nice benchmark for her tennis since the coaching change. She played Linette again and beat her 6-4, 6-4, this time. Like in her match against Bejlek, she wasn’t perfect — her shot selection wasn’t flawless, her intensity flailed in the second set — but it didn’t matter. Świątek was in control. And when she missed, it wasn’t because of two warring voices inside her head.“It was hard to play with my intuition on the hard court season this year. I feel like we focused a lot on that with Francisco at the beginning,” she said.“Also, for me to not be rushed into decisions because, I don’t know, I feel like I’m going to miss or something. So I feel much more solid, and that gives me confidence that I can play the next ball back and next ball back, you know, that I don’t need to finish the rally straightaway.“Now I feel that, for most of time, I make good decisions, and kind of rationally. There are moments where I go for it, especially in this weather, maybe a bit too much, you know?”Świątek knows she’ll have to recalibrate for the much cooler conditions that arrived Sunday ahead of her match against Kostyuk, which figure to stick around for the remainder of the French Open.In that weather, she’ll be able to swing through the ball more without it flying long, but there will be other factors she’ll have to adjust, too. Świątek seems confident doing so these days. It doesn’t feel so complicated to turn one good week into two.This article originally appeared in The Athletic.Tennis, Women's Tennis2026 The Athletic Media Company
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