Tennis legend Chris Evert has given her verdict on the alarming slide in form suffered by defending French Open champion Iga Swiatek and admits the fear factor she used to take onto a clay court has gone for now.
Four-time Roland Garros queen Swiatek has endured a painful clay court season, with heavy defeats at the Madrid Open and the Italian Open confirming her slide in form is not just a temporary blip.
Now 18-time Grand Slam singles champion Evert has admitted the Swiatek collapse is nothing new, as she has been on the slide for some time.
“I don’t think it’s just the last two weeks. She hasn’t won a tournament in a year. She hasn’t one a tournament since last year’s French Open. So this has been this has been going on for a while,” Evert told TNT Sports.
“Slowly that just builds and builds and builds the more you lose the more You lose confidence in your game. And then the more the other players feel that they’ve got a real shot. And I think When I watched Coco beat her, Coco, I think has beaten her the last two times, and I think they were going forehand to forehand the whole time because both of their forehands are weaknesses and Coco’s forehand held up better than Iga’s.
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“So to me, the players know a strategy now how to play Iga and they know she’s not invincible anymore because she’s lost some matches. So, it’s a combination of Iga losing confidence because she hasn’t won a tournament in a year. How can you be a number one player? You know, because she was number one at some point. You can’t be a number one player and not win a tournament for a year.
“And so it’s that component losing confidence, but it’s also the component of the other players are like, they think that they have a shot now against her on the clay. And before that, they didn’t.
“So it’s those two things that are working in the life of Iga right now. And by the way, I hope she finds her level. I was a champion and I know how it feels when you lose that edge against the other players and she’s a nice person, she’s good person, she’s nice person and I hope that level that made her the greatest clay court or maybe one of the greatest clay court players ever.”
Swiatek posted a positive doping test last year, after a drug she was using to help her sleep was contaminated and she was forced to serve a one-month ban.
While it is widely accepted she was not at fault for that incident, Evert believes the stress of her doping case may have played a role in her dip in form.
“We didn’t talk about the doping case,” continued Evert. “I think that really affected her personally because she’s very aware of what people think about her. And I think, that’s very important that she wants to be looked up to and respected and she wants to be a role model.
In her eyes, that was tarnished it a little bit.
“I think that emotionally upset her, for sure. Because all of this happened around the same time after the French Open, that happened. And then the results weren’t what she wanted them to be. She was number one in the world then. And then she lost her number one ranking.
“She’s definitely a confidence player like most top players. She’s a confidence player and I don’t think she has that high level of confidence that she used to have. And I think that I can tell really by her forehand, she seems to be mishitting a few forehands and in these long rallies, these girls, these young ladies are just, you know, are just attacking that forehands side. Her forehand’s breaking down, it’s broken down more than we’ve seen it.
“And her serve needs to improve. The second serve is still a target for these returners like Sabalanka and Coco who have returned so well. And it’s a target. And the fact that like she’s lost to Ostapenko like six times in a row now. Records like that have to chip away at her confidence. How does she get that back?”
When asked how Swiatek could rediscover her best form, Evert offered up some candid advice.
“I think she just has to really get it back the first couple matches that she plays at the French Open,” she added.
“She’s just got to go out there and not be tentative and just go for her shots, be aggressive, maybe make the court smaller, hit down the middle maybe a lot more, get her timing, continue to work on her serve. But again, I think in her favour is fact that the surface is. The speed, she likes the speed. It’s a little slow, slow medium.
“Whereas the other clay court tournaments, I think were faster. So she’s gonna have more time to set up for her shots. And you know, when she walks down that court, again, she’s won it four times. So she feels at home there. And that’s gonna give her maybe two games a set, you know of confidence. But she can work her way back in the first week. She can work her way back and get her game back in the first week of the French. And we’ll see if that happens.
“I’m going to add one more thing – it’s like the same thing when I played Martina [Navratilova] and I lost 13 times in a row. It’s like sometimes you have to bluff yourself.
“You have to blind yourself and you have to bluff yourself. You have be confident, even though you don’t feel 100% confident. You just keep talking to yourself and talking yourself into just going, going all out and going for your shots.
“Go back to basics, you know, get your footwork, get your, get, get you footwork working, accelerate with spin and big targets. You know, you have to go back to being that simplicity that made you a champion.”
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