Iga Swiatek’s rise to the top of WTA has attracted a lot of unwanted attention and expectations and the world #1 is learning how to cope with the pressure.
Swiatek has won 19 ATP titles including four Grand Slams and the Pole is already in the top 10 for the most weeks spent at the top of the WTA Rankings as she is currently into her 99th week. The 22-year-old over the past two years has also come under huge pressure to constantly deliver with some believing she should win every tournament she enters. Apart from the expectation from her fans, Swiatek also has to deal with the whole world of online trolls.
So how does she deal with it?
“It’s pretty easy for me to cut off all these things that are, like, screaming these things, like social media or everything,” the Pole said. “During the tournaments, I try to not go there too much. I’m just posting my stuff and not really going on Twitter or Instagram.
“Actually at the beginning I kind of had to force myself to do it. Now it feels comfortable. Now there are actually so many things that I really don’t understand on the Internet that are weird and not really true, it’s better for me to stay away from it a little bit.
“In terms of the expectations from the outside, that’s it. But I have my expectations. I would say if I feel like I didn’t manage expectations well overall, it’s because I didn’t manage my expectations. The ones from the outside, they really don’t matter that much because I made huge work to manage it and to not really care about them.
“Still sometimes it hits you, especially when you’re tired and you know you did your best, but still people are scrutinizing you. They don’t know the full truth, what’s going on off the court, as well. Sometimes it’s not easy.
“I already kind of understand how the world works, and I’m not expecting that it’s going to change. For sure it would be nice if people remember that we’re still human. Yeah, it’s not possible to win every tournament.”
Being at the top and having experienced it means Swiatek can have a lot to write about her rise and stardom both on and off the court if she was to publish an autobiography of the last couple of years of her life.
“Probably this book would have been 600 pages, so… Hard to answer that,” she said.
“I would just write how I’m proud of my progress and everything in terms of how I handled all the different challenges during my career.
“Everything happened so quickly. I sometimes needed to catch up with my life, to have balance and also be able to do all these obligations well, keep a nice shape on court.
“I would just say how proud I am of that. I think I did a pretty good job at that.”