Swiatek, from disappointment to disappointment: abandons against Li in Madrid and adds his fourth defeat in the last six games | Tennis | Sports

The tennis of former world number one Iga Swiatek is not recovering at the moment, she sunk and then triumphed at the WTA 1000 in Cincinnati. There, in August, he took his last trophy. Since then everything has been curves and more curves for the Pole, who currently occupies fourth place in the ranking and has not made it past the quarter-finals of a tournament for eight months. The 24-year-old from Warsaw fell again this afternoon in the Madrid Masters in the second round against the American Ann Li (7-6(5), 2-6 and 3-0, 2h 10m) after retiring due to an illness in the third round. The player broke down as Arantxa Sánchez Vicario left the court and tried to cover her face while she cried because of the frustration caused by her fourth defeat in the last six games, one of the worst streaks of her career.

“The last few days have been quite terrible, I think I have a virus. I have spent hours feeling good and others very badly. I will be fine in a couple of days, but right now I have zero energy. I was not well to play a tennis match,” he later explained in the mixed zone. And he added: “In the third set I started to feel a little dizzy, I felt like I had no coordination. I couldn’t drink anything because I felt sick, and my energy dropped drastically.”

The Caja Mágica is not the favorite territory of Swiatek, a clay specialist who has also conquered the grass of London (2025) and the cement of the US Open (2022). On the clay of Madrid the blows are more difficult to control. Here only the queen of the tournament with three titles, after resisting three match points.

Those were different times for the Polish tennis player, who then dominated the circuit with an iron fist and today is going through a very delicate hole. Her record this year is 14 wins and eight losses, numbers that are inappropriate for a player who aspires to retain Roland Garros, her major favorite, next June. In Paris she has not won since 2024, when she swept the Italian Jasmine Paolini (6-2 and 6-1) in the final. That was his fourth title – the third in a row – in the French capital, where last year he lost in the semifinals against Sabalenka, who by then had already taken the world number one from him for months.

Swiatek has been trying to get out of the hole for weeks with the incorporation of a new coach, the Spanish Francis Roig. He fired his previous coach – Wim Fissette – and traveled to Mallorca to meet with his replacement and Rafa Nadal, his idol. According to what he told journalists at the Caja Mágica, he found “inspiration” on the island: “I didn’t expect [Nadal] say yes because he is very busy […]. We talked a lot about his experiences and also what I needed to adjust. He also conveyed a lot of calm to me and reminded me that I should look long term, with perspective, although focusing only on the next tournament. That helped me a lot,” he explained.

Neither the first test, when she fell last week in Stuttgart against the Russian Mirra Andreeva in the second round, nor today the second have worked, but Swiatek is confident of arriving recovered in Rome, the last station before her great goal of reconquering Roland Garros: “On the court, before the tournament, I felt that I was playing well. In reality, it is difficult for me not to have played more because I felt very good with my game, I was advancing. That was positive. But the tournament has just started and today I am not I haven’t even been able to compete, it’s disappointing.”