Iga Swiatek ‘blocking off 2022’ as she moves on to 2023

WTA Tour
Iga Swiatek celebrates

Iga Swiatek is in no mood to reflect on her awesome 2022 season as she prepares for the grind of the 2023 season.

Swiatek is eager to back up her ascension to the top of the women’s game.

She acknowledges that to stay ahead of the chasing pack she will need to improve just as the growing pack of contenders will seek to improve and close the gap to the top.

With the WTA Tour nipping at her heels, Swiatek says she wants to move forward and not get caught looking back.

“I’m going to try to kind of cut off everything that happened last year and just focus on the future, because I feel like I can take a lot of experience from these tournaments last year,” she said, “but I don’t want to really like hold on to that too much, because I want to go forward and kind of focus on my next goals.

“For sure all these press conferences are going to kind of remind me of everything, but my goal is to just focus on the future and try to improve as a tennis player.”

Swiatek may not want to reflect on her season but those around the game have been queuing up to applaud her efforts.

The World No 1 put away 15 top ten players in a row in 2022 and saw her become the first double Grand Slam champion in a year since 2016.

Swiatek’s performance in 2022 goes down as one of the great sporting efforts of the 21st century.

“I mean, her season is right up there with the best in this century,” said Tennis Channel’s Pam Shriver. “Iga’s played everybody they’ve put in front of her.”

Former rankings queen Chris Evert, was impressed with the purse Swiatek took home which ranked as the fifth-highest total in history and serves as a testament to her remarkable consistency.

“Love it,” Evert said. “I think it says a lot about the power of women’s tennis. It says a lot about the excellence of Iga that she was able to maintain that top level of tennis over the period of a year.”

Nancy Richey took time to celebrate how far women’s tennis had come with Swiatek winning $10 million in a season.

“I think it is fantastic that Iga finished the year making nearly $10 million,”Richey said.

“As an Original 9 besides just wanting to have a place to play, we also were hoping to increase the prize money we were playing for so the women could make a good living out of playing the sport we loved.

“I think that has happened and it is very gratifying to see how the women’s game has truly “Come A Long Way Baby!”

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