© Getty Images Sport – Sarah Stier
Iga Swiatek admitted that he “doesn’t like playing against Jelena Ostapenko” because the Latvian’s style of play is not comfortable for his own style of play. Swiatek, who has a positive record against almost every top player, surprisingly has yet to beat world No 16 Ostapenko.
In the previous US Open, Swiatek suffered another loss to Ostapenko as the Latvian defeated the Pole 3-6 6-3 6-1 in the round-of-16 at Flushing Meadows. Today, Ostapenko has a 4-0 head-to-head against Swiatek. “This is not the first time I lost in the fourth round.
I don’t consider it a complete failure, as many people say. I knew a tournament like this could happen. Even last year I was almost eliminated in the fourth round. Sometimes you can get out of that situation, sometimes not.
I don’t like playing Ostapenko. There are some players who are uncomfortable to play with. I bet he has the opposite situation and he likes my style. This is completely natural in tennis. There is no point in falling into a disaster, we have to move forward,” Swiatek said Eurosport.
Swiatek prefers to have more time for training, improvement
This season, Swiatek has played in 66 games and has a 56-10 record. Since Swiatek often reaches the later stages of tournaments, there is not much time in between for him to rest or work on something in his game.
Going forward, Swiatek indicated that he will take this into consideration when he begins to develop a schedule for the 2024 season. “The truth is that there is very little time to train. This is the second season where I played the most games of all the girls and I got two injuries.
I think, if I am not the top of the world ranking, I still have a lot of time to improve as an athlete. Next time we will definitely think about the calendar. I’m the type of player that needs a week or two to improve my technique.
Because it often happens that the technique fails, you start to panic and think in your head what to do to play better,” said Swiatek.