US OPEN

August 27, 2024

Iga Swiatek

Press Conference

I. SWIATEK/K. Rakhimova

6-4, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: Congratulations. Two tough sets. Your thoughts on your performance today.

IGA SWIATEK: Well, I'm happy that I'm through to the second round, because, you know, first rounds are never easy.

But for sure I want to improve some things and adjust a little bit so I'll make less mistakes. But I'm happy that I'm in the second round.

THE MODERATOR: Questions in English.

Q. She played a really good match against Sabalenka a few weeks ago in D.C. She's playing well. Curious what was she doing well that you had to problem-solve?

IGA SWIATEK: Well, I didn't know her scores before this tournament, so yeah, but, I mean, she's a solid player. She's not playing too fast, which kind of makes you want to speed up, you know, but you can't do that in these conditions sometimes because it's too risky.

So I guess I feel like I made, you know, a lot of mistakes, because sometimes she was kind of provoking it. Yeah, but I was kind of mostly focused on myself so I can't really say a lot about her game, because also, we have never even practiced together, so it's hard for me to kind of know.

Q. Similar to that, I remember when you spoke in Cincinnati, you suggested you really hadn't seen Mirra Andreeva play before. I'm curious how often you're watching players that you may not be as familiar to you, if you're watching their game or you're relying on coaches or your team to tell you what their game is like?

IGA SWIATEK: Well, I'm watching a little bit usually, and just to see the game style. But, like, tactically when I watch anything, I don't see a lot. So honestly, yeah, my coach is really good at that, so I basically rely on him. He's usually right about most of the stuff. Sometimes the girls are playing differently against me, because they have kind of nothing to lose, but I'm also ready for that.

I mean, so, yeah, mostly I'm just seeing what the game style but he's giving me tactics, and he's seeing better in the broad horizon, yeah.

Q. Wondering, I know you had some comments recently about the tennis schedule. It seems like just listening to players here there are a lot of people saying similar things. Does that encourage you maybe there could be a change or improvement or maybe it's one of those things we know there's a problem but we don't know how to fix it?

IGA SWIATEK: Well, it would be easy to fix it for people that are in charge, but they already made plenty of decisions and they promised so many things to tournaments, WTA, for example, that, you know, it would mean for them to change their mind, which is tricky, because it's business, you know.

But I think players are aware that this is crazy what's going on (smiling), and the schedule is really tough. I know that, I mean, I spoke about it in Cincinnati, for example, and there are people saying that, oh, I don't have to play so many tournaments, but truth, like the fact is that we have so many mandatory tournaments that we literally need to, you know, show up and we don't have time to, like, work on stuff or, like believe peacefully, because from one tournament we're going straight to another.

And this is the case for, like, we don't even have, you know, time until the end of the year, because literally the first tournament starts on 29th of December. So yeah, the season is, for sure, too long.

I think it needs to be changed, because also, I think it's going to be better for fans. Because they're not going to see their favorite players, like, pull out or getting injured so much, I think.

And we can present better quality, I would say. I mean, we could. But yeah, as I said at the beginning, I saw from last year that we don't have much influence on what's going on, you know, upstairs, and basically these rules have been changed without us even knowing about them, you know.

These decisions about mandatory tournaments were shown to us, like, after. So we spoke to WTA about it that we want to at least be in the loop, you know. But it would be nice for us to have some impact, because I don't think our sport is going in the right direction because of that.

Q. A related question. If you were in charge of tennis, I know this is never going to happen with all the agendas, but just from your perspective, imagine you get to rip up the calendar and start from scratch. How would you design the calendar? What would the ideal schedule look like?

IGA SWIATEK: Well, would you say that, for example, the system that WTA had, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, was bad? Because they had, like, 11 mandatory tournaments or 12. I'm not sure, honestly. Now everybody is going to check. I'll be wrong probably.

But would you say it was less interesting or -- yeah, so basically it's all about, you know, the promises that they give to tournaments that we have to play the six 500 tournaments, which basically is not necessary sometimes because we can perform well in 1000, and have a great ranking, but they promise that so we have to adjust.

But basically it means that we have no time off. I mean, I wouldn't say I haven't thought of it, like, how I would schedule everything, because obviously there's no sense to do that now when everything is changing the wrong way kind of. But I would say tennis was as interesting ten years ago with the other system that we had, it was fine. And players, if they wanted to play 500 tournaments to get their ranking better, they did that, but they weren't forced to.

I have nothing against 500 tournaments, but, you know, sometimes it's hard to squeeze it in.

Q. Is the extension of the 1000 events to two weeks, is that all part of the same thing for you?

IGA SWIATEK: Yeah. I mean, my coach is scheduling everything pretty wisely, but it is tough, you know. I played Stuttgart, Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros, and I only had, like, two days in between every tournament. If I want to perform well I'm not going to have time to do anything. It can work for few years, but what's going to happen later if you want to keep playing at the same level?

I guess it's not going to be about really the quality of tennis but who is going to cope better with the system and sometimes plan wiser and not look at the rules sometimes, you know.