Everything Iga Swiatek said after French Open loss to Aryna Sabalenka: ft. explanation for losing 6-0 set
Iga Swiatek has assessed her French Open semi-final defeat to Aryna Sabalenka and looked ahead to the grass-court season.
The 24-year-old Polish star’s remarkable 26-match French Open winning streak and bid for a fourth straight title at Roland Garros ended with a 6-7(1), 6-4, 0-6 loss to world No 1 Sabalenka.
The world No 5 won only six points in the final set — including just two points in the last four games as Sabalenka stormed to victory.
Swiatek has not reached a final since securing her fourth French Open crown and fifth Grand Slam overall at last year’s edition of the Paris major.
Here is everything Swiatek said in her English press conference after losing to Sabalenka.
SWIATEK: I played some quality matches, but now probably isn’t the best time to look at the wider perspective. Probably it wasn’t a bad tournament, but obviously not the result I wanted.
Q. Can you analyse what happened in the last set?
SWIATEK: Well for sure, I remember missing like two backhands when she broke me first time [in the third set] and she still served really well. I feel like I served the same and she read my serve much better. I probably won less points on the return. I don’t really know. I think I lost my intensity a bit and she just played pretty strong as in the first set, but I didn’t react to that well and just couldn’t push back.
Q. How did Sabalenka make it so difficult?
SWIATEK: I think the pace was from her super fast and she, especially at the beginning of the match, just played as hard as possible and pretty risky. It was just hard to get into any rally, and then I was able to do that. So the game was like… more things happened because it wasn’t just serve and one shot or return and one shot, I could build a rally a little bit. In the third set, I feel like we kind of came back to what happened in the first. She used her chances and I didn’t really keep up what I was doing in the second set.
Q. Do you want to keep going and come straight back or have a little bit of time off before the grass?
“I’m gonna have a few days off, but the coaches will plan that. I hope we can have some decent kind of little pre-season on grass, because it’s always been pretty hard to have that, especially because when I wanted to be a little bit home. But I don’t feel like I need to be home right now, so maybe I’ll go somewhere in Europe [to] practice.”
Q. Are you looking forward to having a change of mindset now you don’t have any titles to defend for the next 12 months?
“I think I already changed my mindset before this tournament. Like, losing early in Rome gave me some time and perspective, so I wasn’t really thinking about points here on this tournament. Obviously, looking at the math, I lost many points right now, but I know it doesn’t really matter. Any of us can win these tournaments; we kind of start every tournament from the beginning. So I’m just gonna try to do my job and focus on just getting progress and learning new stuff on grass right now.”
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Q. When you talk about the loss of intensity in the third set, was that physical intensity or mental, emotional intensity?
SWIATEK: I think it’s more physical, but no I mean… it’s not like I didn’t have energy. Sometimes it’s about if you’re going to play your shots 10 centimetres longer or shorter. It’s just me playing 5% faster or with more spin, so it’s not like a huge difference, but at this level when you play against the top players, you’re gonna feel the difference. She came on pretty strongly in the third set and just went for it and then the set went pretty quickly. I think I didn’t have much time to reset that again, like I did at the beginning of the second set. So, I came back from like 4-1 in the first, doing that second time would be hard. But she played like she didn’t doubt, she just went for it. Yeah, that’s what I mean about intensity.
Q. Was Sabalenka making a different adjustment in the third set compared to the first set?
SWIATEK: In the first set, it was enough for me to start serving better. and also she missed some ball. And we also played some longer rallies where I could just play rather than react to the first ball and that’s it, that’s the end of the rally, you know. And in third, I feel like my serve was still working, maybe I should have served with more like creativity rather than the same stuff that has been working in second set. Maybe I should have surprised with something, but I don’t know now. I would need to watch.
Q. How proud is she of the 26-match winning streak she had at the French Open?
SWIATEK: Yeah, I mean I love playing here. So for sure I’m happy that I was fortunate enough to play so many great tournaments here and even this one, I feel like I played better than weeks before. I’m just happy that I have this place to come back to every year and just try to push myself.
Q. From the beginning of the season, you didn’t make it to a final. Do you think it’s a question of confidence or are your opponents getting better and better?
SWIATEK: Honestly, we play for like six months now, so I can’t answer that question because every tournament is different.
Q. There was the discussion with the umpire. Was that a distraction? Were you upset with something the umpire said?
SWIATEK: He was coming down to check every mark when Aryna wanted to. And when I had a mark that was out, he was convincing me that I only came there because I saw that my return was out — and I framed the return, I knew from the beginning that it’s gonna be out. And I didn’t really look at the ball, I just went to check the mark and I saw the mark was out. I wanted him to come down, but he didn’t. So I don’t think that was fair. Especially when he came down like every time Aryna asked him to. I don’t get it, but I don’t really care.
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