Swiatek: “I’m focused on myself – I don’t care about the other two of the Big Three”
Iga Swiatek has four Grand Slam titles to her name, and has been world No 1 for well over a year. It’s no surprise that part of her mentality is to ignore what anyone else is doing – and focus just on herself. That includes the other two of the emerging Big Three of women’s … Continued
Iga Swiatek with her trophy (Michael Baucher/Panoramic)
Iga Swiatek has four Grand Slam titles to her name, and has been world No 1 for well over a year. It’s no surprise that part of her mentality is to ignore what anyone else is doing – and focus just on herself.
That includes the other two of the emerging Big Three of women’s tennis, Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina.
Prompted in her winner’s press conference to talk about the entire Big Three concept, she shrugged it off, saying: “I don’t really analyse that, because I know that this is something that kind of you guys created, and I understand that fans love that. You too. So I’m trying to just be focused on my work. And for me, there is no reason to do that.
“I look at my clay court season and I see on every tournament I really played consistently. I reached, you know, like quarter-finals, semi-finals, finals, I won Stuttgart, I won this tournament, I’m kind of just focused on myself and I don’t care about the other two players.”
Swiatek: We respect each other
Swiatek had said something similar before Roland-Garros started.
“I can’t say like I have any deep relationship with them. We respect each other, and that’s all I would say.
“But on matches, honestly I’m not really thinking about all the stuff that I’m doing off court. I want to play the best game possible. Usually when I think about, you know, the player like personally, it doesn’t help. So I just think what I have to do tactically against them, and that’s all. We don’t really have time on a match to overanalyse all the other stuff. I just try to play my game as best as possible. So I don’t really think about all the off-court stuff.”
Sabalenka, in contrast, said she got extra motivation from playing either of the other two.
“I really like it, actually, because it’s always tough battles against Iga or Elena. So that’s really an extra motivation. That’s what I’m saying, like that’s really pushing you in the next level. You’re working so hard to get the title. There is no easy matches.
“So, yeah, that really like motivate me a lot to keep going, to keep doing what we’re doing.”
