Serena Williams used to boss the schedule like no other player, dipping in and out of action as she saw fit.
It worked out pretty well for the 23-time major champion, who was the queen of peaking for the big events.
Iga Swiatek is planning to take a page from Serena’s playbook in 2026, and lighten up her schedule.
After her 7-5, 6-1 loss to Elena Rybakina, swiatek talked about the fact that she felt a little undercooked in Australia because she hadn’t had the time to finish perfecting some of the changes she is making to her game, particularly with her serve.
“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,” Swiatek said.
The Pole said she isn’t sure how it will turn out, but it is something she wants to try for the sake of improving her game.
“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…” she said.
“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.”
Swiatek was asked what she wanted to improve, and she spoke of her serve as a work in progress that held her back during her Australian Open campaign.
“Some technical stuff that has been pretty tough for me to have smooth,” she said. “I see Carlos [Alcaraz], for example, changing his serve every year. For me, it’s one little thing takes much longer time.
“There is some stuff on the serve that I want to change, and I already changed that in the pre-season, but then matches come, and you don’t have that much time to think about this. You don’t want to think about these kind of details when you play.
“This year we didn’t manage to completely close the stuff that we wanted to change in the pre-season. It just got a bit longer for me to change some stuff. So this year I felt like I also needed to work on it during the tournament, and that’s why maybe, I don’t know, I felt like I played, like, tiny bit worse.”
