Martina Navratilova has urged Iga Swiatek to work on her serve following her 2024 Australian Open exit.
On Saturday, January 20, Czech teenager Linda Noskova came from a set down to beat Swiatek 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the third round of the Melbourne Major. With the win, she broke the World No.1’s 18-match unbeaten run and registered one of the upsets of the tournament.
Swiatek is known for routinely tweaking her game. In the off-season last year, she slightly altered her serve, reverting to a former motion. Speaking about this before the Australian Open, she said:
“Sometimes when I got more tight, it got a little bit worse. Hopefully, we can avoid that with my new serve.”
After Swiatek’s defeat to Noskova, 18-time Major winner Navratilova stated that she was not happy with Pole’s new serve and urged her to work on it.
“I’m not thrilled with Iga’s new serve, it looks awkward. And I just don’t see that she’s getting any more out of it and it just looks really uncomfortable. And she needs to get more free points, that’s where she can improve the most I think, with her serve,” she told Tennis Channel.
“I just don’t like it, it will not repeat itself under pressure because she just kind of goes and stops. It’s just not fluid at all. And when you’re not fluid, when you stop, when you get nervous, you stop at different places and then you just don’t get that rhythm. So I think she can tinker with that serve, go back closer to what she was like, maybe change it up a little bit but has to be fluid. It’s not, it’s really awkward looking,” she added.
Iga Swiatek on 2024 Australian Open exit: “Sometimes I don’t even understand”
After her 2024 Australian Open exit, Iga Swiatek stated that she was at a loss to explain how she felt. After starting the match strongly by winning the opening set, she lost the second set and Linda Noskova broke serve twice to win the decider.
At a press conference after the defeat, Swiatek said that she did not understand how she felt about the result.
“Why do you need to understand [how I feel]? Sometimes I don’t even understand, so I don’t know if you will. I mean, I really wasn’t expecting a lot. I just tried to do the best kind of work possible. I felt today that, OK, I wasn’t playing my best game, and I had many things that didn’t work in previous rounds,” she said.
Despite not progressing past the fourth round in Melbourne, Swiatek said that she was feeling positive about the rest of the season.
“This year I feel like I just want to get back to work. I know I’m going to have plenty of chances during the season to show my game,” she added.
