It's back to the drawing board for Iga Swiatek after Australian Open loss

The Pole was dominated 7-5, 6-1 by world No 5 Elena Rybakina in the quarter-finals of the Australian Open. Swiatek looked severely underpowered on the slick Melbourne courts, being broken on three of her four final service games.

The result continues her, somewhat, disappointing results at the hard-court Grand Slams, having not reached such a final since her victory at the 2022 US Open.

Given the result, Swiatek believes that now is the time to make significant technical results to her game.

"There are some stuff on the serve that I want to change, and I already changed that in the pre-season, but then, you know, matches come, and you don't have that much time to, like, think about this," remarked Swiatek during her post-match press conference.

"You don't want to think about these kind of details when you play.

"So then it comes back to the old patterns, you know.

"So basically, yeah, I'll focus on that. I'll see from there, because for sure, there are some stuff that I can change to play better, and I'll try to do that in next weeks and months."

However, whilst the former world No 1 has key technical objectives in mind, Swiatek believes that she will need to sacrifice some tournaments in order to sufficiently achieve them.

"Yeah, I don't feel it's possible to do that, you know, in the short period of time that we have between tournaments," argued Swiatek.

"So last year I had trouble with making this kind of decision, but this year I'm trying to change my approach. So I think, for sure, we'll skip some 1000 tournaments.

"I was never in this position, so I don't know what the result will be, but I think it's necessary, because if you want to improve your game, unless I want to stay, like, the same and just prepare for every tournament, then I can do that as well.

"I'll play well, but if I want to improve something, it will be nice to have some time. Unfortunately, calendar doesn't give that."

At last year's Beijing Open, Swiatek made a scathing rebuke of the WTA's scheduling, labelling it 'madness.'

"I don't know yet how my career will be in a couple of years," she said.

"Perhaps I'll have to choose some tournaments and skip them, even if they are mandatory. The WTA has made this a madness with all these mandatory rules.

"It's impossible to fit everything in the calendar. I don't think any elite player can manage it.

"We have to be smart, not worry too much about the rules and just think about what is healthy for us. It's tough."

The world No 2 is scheduled to next play the WTA 1000 event in Doha, February 8 - 14, which will feature all of the world's top 32.

Swiatek has had much success in Qatar and is the only woman to win three or more singles titles (2022, 2023, 2024).

"In first set, I think it was a difference of a couple points," analysed Swiatek.

"She also, I thought, gave me some chances on her serve, and sometimes I used them, You know, I wanted to be aggressive on the second serve, so sometimes, yeah, will make mistakes.

"But if you want to break, you need to make it in in the moment like that.

"Then in the second set I thought, I don't know, that the pace from her got a little bit even higher, and she was more precise, and maybe I dropped the intensity at the beginning especially."

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