Iga Swiatek arrives at Roland Garros this month under a cloud of uncertainty, with the Pole enduring one of the toughest stretches of her career just before the defense of her French Open title.<\/p>\n
The 23-year-old Swiatek, who has won four titles on the clay courts of Paris, has slipped out of the world\u2019s top three for the first time since March 2022 after back-to-back defeats in Madrid and Rome.<\/p>\n
A 6-1 6-1 humbling by Coco Gauff in Spain and a straight-sets defeat by Danielle Collins in Italy have exposed uncharacteristic frailties in the game of a player seen as virtually untouchable on clay after she clinched her third Suzanne Lenglen Cup in a row last year.<\/p>\n
Adding to the weight on Swiatek\u2019s shoulders is the lingering shadow of Aryna Sabalenka, who seized the world number one ranking from the Pole late last season.<\/p>\n
While Swiatek has largely remained within touching distance, the rivalry has unsettled her dominance, and she has struggled to recapture the ruthless consistency that defined her meteoric rise.<\/p>\n
“I think I wasn\u2019t really present on court, not there to fight or compete,” Swiatek said after her loss to Collins in Rome. “I focused on my mistakes \u2014 that was my error. I wasn\u2019t doing things properly. I was concentrating on the wrong things.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iga Swiatek arrives at Roland Garros this month under a cloud of uncertainty, with the Pole enduring one of the toughest stretches of her career just before the defense of her French Open title. The 23-year-old Swiatek, who has won four titles on the clay courts of Paris, has slipped out of the world\u2019s top …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49042,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49041\/revisions\/49042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}