Iga Swiatek has addressed Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley's proposal to have women play best-of-five-set matches by stating that she "does not think that it makes a lot of sense."
This year's Australian Open women's final featured high-quality tennis throughout as Elena Rybakina overcame Aryna Sabalenka 6-4 4-6 6-4 in two hours and 18 minutes of play.
Following its conclusion, Happy Slam tournament director Tiley dropped a bombshell, revealing that the tournament was looking into the possibility of introducing a five-set format to women's matches in 2027. Under the proposal, women would play best-of-three until the quarterfinal, and then best-of-five onward.
Swiatek, who has numerous times ripped the WTA calendar and schedule as too demanding, returns to action this week in Doha. And the six-time Grand Slam champion was asked how she would feel about possibly playing a best-of-five-set match.
Swiatek: I don't really think it makes sense for us to play such long matches
“I think with the world right now that is kind of, like, speeding up, I don’t really think it makes sense for us to play such long matches. Especially when I think it would be tough to keep the quality up throughout the whole match," the world No. 2 explained.
“But if you ask specifically to my game, I consider myself one of the players that is like kind of tough in coping with endurance and longer matches. I think maybe I would have some advantage.
“Honestly, I’ve never played such a long match, so I have no idea how my body would react. I think also the whole season would change, because we would need to plan everything differently and prepare for these long, long matches. There would, for sure, be many, many more questions about the scheduling then.”
As mentioned above, Swiatek has been one of the harshest critics of the tennis schedule for the past couple of years. With that being said, the Pole's opinion about playing a five-set match isn't surprising a bit.
Swiatek lost to Rybakina in straight sets in this year's Australian Open quarterfinal.
