Iga Swiatek warned she is making a mistake after changing a key area of her game
Iga Swiatek has made a big change to her service motion during this season and former world No 4 Greg Rusedski has questioned whether the Polish star should have waited until the off-season to make such a significant change.
Swiatek changed her service motion earlier this year and her new coach Francisco Roig is now continuing that development after she parted ways with Wim Fissette following the Miami Open last month.
In her first tournament with Roig in her corner, Swiatek fell 6-3, 4-6, 3-6 to world No 3 Mirra Andreeva in the quarter-finals at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart.
The six-time Grand Slam champion and former world No 1, who is currently ranked fourth, downed Laura Siegemund 6-2, 6-3 in her opening match at the WTA 500 event.
Speaking on the latest episode of his Off Court With Greg Rusedski podcast, Rusedski gave his verdict on a technical tweak Swiatek made to her serve that he noticed in Stuttgart.
“I have seen it. They tried to loosen up the wrist,” said the 1997 US Open runner-up. “But it looks a little bit all over the shop, if I’m going to be polite.
“This is where I say, sometimes you come into a job and you want to make a change, but that’s what Francisco likes to do at times.
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“And for me, it’s very difficult to do that right away. That’s a thing where you need to do it later on.
“She’s always had that elbow quite high, but you can see there is a little tweak he is trying to get in there, and I’m not sure it’s the time and the place, with such a short amount of time coming in there.
“That’s where I say, sometimes you have to be cautious with the change so close to tournaments.
“That’s an off-season thing, or that’s a period where you decide, I’m going to take three weeks off. Like maybe after Wimbledon, if she doesn’t defend her title, I take three weeks off, and then I get that into play for the hard-court season.
“If I’m working with a player or looking at a player, I think to myself: okay, I can change their weight transfer, I can get them an earlier preparation, I can change their mindset, but I’m not touching anything that’s a little bit technical, especially something like a serve.
“Because if you do, the player is not used to the movement, and you can sometimes cause injury, which is a dangerous combination.
“So I’m always worried about that as a coach, because you need a minimum of three weeks to make something that’s a big technical change. The other things need to be a little bit more subtle.
“And Swiatek, she will be disappointed, because she expects success right away, so Francisco is under the cosh right away, on clay. Not easy.”
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