How to pronounce Iga Świątek’s name correctly

Tennis News

James Richardson
March 8, 2023

Iga Świątek is clear and free at the top of the WTA Rankings and is undoubtedly the form player on the women’s tour.

Those not overly familiar with Polish pronunciation have stuggled to say her name, that includes broadcasters, journalists and even some of her fans.

Luckily for all of us, speech and language experts have come to the rescue.

The Youtube channel Speech Modification have out together a short video that will have you ready to chant, sing or say Iga Świątek.

Swiatek is a child of 21st century having been born on 31 May 2001 in Warsaw to Dorota and Tomasz Świątek.

Her father Tomasz represented Poland at the 1988 Seoul Olympics as a rower.

Early on Tomasz instilled in both his daughters the importance of being physically active and the value of sport.

It was her sister’s choice to take up tennis that inspired Iga to get into the sport. She also attributes her desire to win to wanting to beat her older sister every time they battled on court.

Świątek’s 37-match winning streak in 2022 established her as a force to be reckoned with in women’s tennis.

A quiet but likable character who is popular on the tour, Świątek shows that you don’t have to be larger than life to attract support in tennis.

She won her first Grand Slam as a teenager but unlike many other teen prodigies she hasn’t fallen away from the elite.

Świątek insists she still have plenty to learn in the game and has plenty of support from her close-knit team.

She hopes that she can start to intimidate other player’s with her status in the game in the way Serena Williams did expertly.

“This is the thing that Serena really showed how to do. Because she was at the top for a long time and she was using that pressure and intimidation of being at the top of the game. She used it pretty well to make her matches a little bit easier, especially at the beginning.

“I feel like I was able to do that a couple of times, but I want to do it more often. So for sure I’m aware of that and I want to try and use it in the right way.”

She harbours dreams of a Wimbledon title but feels she still needs to improve on grass for that to happen.

“I guess it was always kind of my dream, but still, I’m not going to really focus on it because you can see in tennis that some things happen when you don’t expect them. So I’m just going to learn and focus on the process.

“But for sure I always said it’s the dream. But I still feel like I need more skills on grass to make it a goal.”

Iga Swiatek