PARIS: Iga Svitek is back on the hunt for happiness at Roland Garros, looking for a first Olympic crown to add to her four French Open titles.
The Polish world No. 1 has been dominant on the red clay in Paris, winning four of the past five tournaments and is unbeaten there since losing to Greece's Maria Sakkari in the quarter-finals in 2021.
The five-time Grand Slam champion, who won the US Open in 2022, will be looking to go further than she did at the 2021 Tokyo Games, where she lost to Paula Badosa in the second round.
Svitek, 23, had plenty of time to prepare for the Paris Olympics after her early exit from Wimbledon, where she lost in the third round to Yulia Putintseva.
A painful defeat on grass at the All England Club brought Switek's 21-match winning streak to a shuddering halt.
Then he was asked how to prepare for the Olympics in Paris.
“Definitely I'm going to take a lesson and relax a little more,” she said. “I don't know, I think even if I don't do well in this tournament, the way the whole season looks, I deserve it.
“I literally have to do it better because I'm not going to be able to go through a whole season playing good tennis.”
In 2020, Switek announced herself to the tennis world when she won the French Open.
She was the first Polish player, male or female, to win a Grand Slam singles title and has dominated the tournament since her blip three years ago.
Last month she beat Italy's Jasmine Paolini in a one-sided final, becoming the fourth woman in the modern era to lift the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen four times, after Justine Henin, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf.
The world No. 1 also completed the Madrid-Rome-Roland Garros clay treble. The only other woman in history to do it in one season is Serena Williams.
Switek has a sporting pedigree — his father, Tomasz, represented Poland in rowing at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
“Usually a little kid would have trouble hitting even one or two balls, but he could keep up with dozens of shots,” recalls his first coach, Artur Szoszko.
“She was a fighter…. I knew if it went to a super tie-break, not to worry – Iga wouldn't crack under the pressure.”
Szostaczko taught Switek until the age of 10.
He was then coached by Michael Kacznowski, who recalls that Swietek always wanted to treat his hard-working older sister Agata on an equal footing.
“Iga got really angry with me because I proposed some basic drill where I would feed Agata eight balls but Iga only six because he was younger,” he said.
“That made her angry. She went to her father and said she wanted him as much as Agatha.
Switek will hope for the determination to lead to a gold medal in Paris on his favorite court.
