Iga Swiatek looks to harness stress in big matches

James Richardson
June 1, 2022

After battling past Jessica Pegula in the French Open quarter-finals Iga Swiatek admitted that she almost always feels nerves on court.

Swiatek said that she tries to harness the stress of the fear of failure to improve her performance.

She believes that correctly harnessing nervousness can enhance her performance.

Swiatek has established a unique mental health regime that many believe has played a huge part in her 33-match WTA Tour winning streak.

“Oh yeah I do [feel nervous],” Swiatek said in her on-court interview.

“I think when I stop feeling nervous something weird is going on. The thing is sometimes stress is an important thing that is going to make you more active and more tense. So you can really play your best performance. I tried to use it that way.”

Former French Open champion Mats Wilander has made Swiatek the clear favourite to win the women’s crown.

Wilander insisted that there was no other player in the draw that could hurt her in the tournament.

“She is on a different level I think,” Wilander said on the Eurosport broadcast of the French Open.

“I don’t know if there is a player left that can hurt her and I don’t think she is going to hurt herself in this tournament.

“She looks very, very stable.”

Swiatek faces Daria Kasatkina in the last four looking to notch her third win over the Russian this year.

The top seed says that while she takes confidence from the victories in Melbourne and Doha, she won’t be underestimating her opponent.

“I want to use the experience that I have and also I know her game style pretty well and I know how her strokes how I feel them on my racquet, so that’s pretty positive,” Swiatek said.

“But I don’t really want to become overconfident. I don’t think it’s going to happen because still it’s semifinal of a Grand Slam and she really deserves with her game to be here. Because I feel like she’s playing even more solid than she was and she already played really solid.

“I’m going to prepare as to any other match and for sure I’m going to use the experience, but I don’t really want to come back to those matches because they were on hard court and it was a different time for me.

“I feel like I’m in the right place and that place that I kind of worked for really hard. … Being in the semifinal, it’s a new experience because it [doesn’t] happen very often and I hope I’m going to use my chance.”

Iga Swiatek