Iga Świątek said she is in “the worst nightmare a tennis player can have” after one of the most absurd win-streaks in tennis ended with a shock defeat to compatriot Magda Linette at the Miami Open.
Linette, the world No. 50 snapped Świątek’s run of 73 consecutive opening-match wins, which dated back to 2021, in a 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 result that left the six-time Grand Slam champion telling reporters that tennis “feels complicated in my head.”
“I’ve always been an over-thinker, but lately it’s just been so intense. It’s hard for me to get rid of many thoughts I have and this used to be my strength,” Świątek said.
It was March 2019, before Świątek had reached the world’s top 100, when she last lost a match having won the first set 6-0 or 6-1.
The defeat represents a low point in an up-and-down season for Świątek. Since hiring experienced Belgian coach Wim Fissette toward the end of the 2024 season, she has had mixed results as she works through finding the right balance between baseline patience and going for too much when under stress. The highlight was last summer’s Wimbledon title, but overall Świątek has struggled to find the form that made her such a dominant world No. 1 for the previous few years. Her ranking is now No. 3.
Świątek has frequently vented her frustration at her team, which includes long-term psychologist Daria Abramowicz. This dynamic was particularly apparent toward the end of last week’s quarterfinal defeat to Elina Svitolina at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif, which followed one of her best performances of the year: a suffocatingly restrained 6-2, 6-0 win over Karolína Muchová.
This loss to Linette did not follow a recent trend of Świątek imploding when things have gone against her, which has been worsened by the unreliability of her first serve. Against Linette, Świątek only dropped her serve twice, but made frequent return errors that prevented her from putting any pressure on her opponent, who won just two games in their last meeting.
Though the scoreline and the tennis did not show it, Świątek said she experienced the loss as a kind of collapse. Streaks, and the art of front-running, have been defining in her ascent to and stay at the top of the sport. She compiled the longest WTA win-streak of the 21st century in winning 37 matches in a row during 2022. Before a defeat to Maria Sakkari at this year’s Qatar Open, she had won 109 WTA 1000 matches in a row after winning the first set. Between 2022 and 2024, she compiled streaks of 44 and 56 matches in which she did not lose after winning the first set at any level.
“Unconsciously or consciously it’s hard for me to change things, and then my tennis kind of collapses. So I need to work now to get back from that, because for sure I haven’t felt things like that for like five years,” Świątek said.
“I’ve always had something that kept me figuring things out instead of dropping so much during matches. So I’ll just get back to work, try to get something positive out of the practices and some confidence back, and try to figure it out.”
Asked to describe her emotions, Świątek said: “I feel like I carry a lot of expectations, and I can’t really, like, fulfil them right now. I need to get rid of them, because my game hasn’t been good enough to have any expectations. I think I’m a bit confused, but there’s no way but forward, and I’m going to try to just work hard to get back from that. And I know I have it in me; I just lost it for a second: the game and the mentality that I should have on the court.”
Świątek, who during an interview in 2025 said that changes to her game are only “visible on a bigger horizon,” reiterated that sentiment in a segment of her post-match mixed zone reported by Bounces.
“You can’t do, like, one huge step and suddenly it’s not going to — there’s no magic solutions. So I guess you need to do it with small changes, but kind of consistently, and keep your discipline.
“And you know, there’s other stuff — I’ll honestly need time to like figure out and to answer some questions, and I’ll see.”
Świątek may benefit from an unexpectedly long break before the clay-court season, which is scheduled to begin for her at the Stuttgart Open in Germany in mid-April. At the Australian Open in January she spoke about the need to skip certain events to avoid physical and mental burnout, before withdrawing from last month’s Dubai Tennis Championships. World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka withdrew from the same event, before its tournament director criticized both players for not attending.
Clay has tended to be Świątek’s strongest surface, with the French Open accounting for four of her six Grand Slams, though it has masked just how good — if less remarkable — her hard-court record is.
She still lost that sense of invincibility on the dirt last year, failing to win a title on the surface, and exiting the French Open at the semifinal stage in her first defeat at the tournament for four years.
Świątek will hope it can be a sanctuary this year, as she looks for solutions.
