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Tomasz Wiktorowski is the man responsible for Iga Swiatek's success. Swiatek's coach has been with her for a long time. He knew what kind of talent Swiatek possessed, but he could not have expected her to grow so rapidly.
“I expected Iga to achieve such results, but I didn't know if she would do it with me or with the next coach,” Wiktorowski said for eurosport.com
“What I did know was that she was a player made for great tennis achievements.
Iga showed that she was already a great player and she just needed a bit of redirection, a different training, approach, highlighting her strengths and a change in thinking - to think about what she can dominate, and not just focus on how to neutralise the strengths of her opponents.
That's what domination is, imposing your style of play. It is important that Iga implemented what I asked for very quickly. To be honest, I didn't expect her to be able to put these little things on the court so quickly. It was really little things, such as forehand swing correction, return settings or the ratio of the direction of the shot." Iga Swiatek is a fast learner.
Her talent is obvious, so she never had a problem adapting and learning new things. “I was surprised that these little things were introduced so quickly. In turn, thanks to the fact that good results came quickly, it was also easier for me later.
We built trust and were able to move forward based on that”.
Wiktorowski on Iga's failures
Iga Swiatek trained hard. Tomasz taught her more aggressive tennis. She quickly adapted and applied new things on the field. However, Tomasz seems to want even more from her, and believes that she could have won certain matches.
“I am most happy with how Iga made decisions on the court, with her responsibility,” he said.
“At the beginning of the year, we decided to show her more aggressive tennis. Aggressiveness can be introduced through ball speed, pace and direction.
Iga started making really good decisions about when to speed up, from which balls, how much speed up and in which direction.
At the same time, she retained responsibility for what she does. This responsibility was absent in her match against Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals of the WTA Finals and against Alize Cornet in the third round of Wimbledon.
These are two matches in which Iga played ‘irresponsibly’. She lost nine matches all season. Seven were just a better performance from a rival and Iga's being average. In turn, those two matches with Sabalenka and Cornet were winnable.
They lacked an element of responsibility for the decisions taken.
However, in the rest of the matches this season, decision-making has been at a very high level”.