Iga Swiatek aiming to serve up storm at Wimbledon amid wide-open field

In the past seven years, the women’s title at Wimbledon has been won by six first-time champions, the post-Serena Williams era offering opportunities for many to shine. While this year’s event includes three former champions, last year’s winner, Marketa Vondrousova, the 2022 champion, Elena Rybakina and 2018 champion Angelique Kerber, the overriding sense is that a seventh could be on the cards. Just who that will be is a trickier question than it might seem, with doubts surrounding many of the leading contenders.

That list is topped, however, by Iga Swiatek, the 23-year-old Pole who has taken control of the women’s Tour since the shock retirement of Ash Barty in early 2022. Swiatek won her fourth Roland Garros title last month – her fifth Grand Slam title – but her best effort in four previous visits to Wimbledon was reaching the quarter-finals last year.

Totally at home on clay, where she has more time to wind up her punishing groundstrokes, grass puts Swiatek outside of her comfort zone and even though there is no doubt she is the best player in the world, until she conquers the surface, there will always be fears things could go wrong. She is still the favourite, but is trying to lower expectations.

“It’s hard for me to be considered as an underdog anywhere now, but I really need to focus on just the process of being a better player here and learning how to play the best kind of tennis and not really on the rankings or the expectations that come with my ranking,” she said.

After the intense effort of the clay-court season, when she won in Madrid and Rome, as well as at Roland Garros, Swiatek took a much-needed break, rather than play a warm-up event. That rest included a trip to Liverpool to see Taylor Swift in concert but such was the intensity, she decided against going to see her again at Wembley. “Three days after [the concert] I was so excited I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “We decided it’s better to focus on the tournament.”

That focus has included more work on her serve, already a threat but she hopes it will give her more free points than in the past, always a bonus on grass. “That was one of the goals, to sometimes win by serving and making pressure with that,” she said.

I managed to do that on other surfaces. Hopefully on this surface, it’s going to be also similar. Here it’s even more important to serve well the first serve. It seemed fine in practice, so I’m going to try it out in matches with some stress coming in and everything. Hopefully this progress that I’ve made is going to pay off.”