NEW YORK — Iga Swiatek is off to a strong start on her quest to win a second straight major as she beat Emiliana Arango of Colombia 6-1, 6-2 on Tuesday. She marched into Round 2 in exactly one hour, looking every inch the favorite to double her US Open tally, having earned the title here in 2022. Next up, she will play Suzan Lamens of the Netherlands on Thursday.
Swiatek has now won 16 of her last 17 matches, a run that includes her first Wimbledon title and a victory at the Cincinnati Open. It’s been an impressive return to top form after a blip during the clay-court season, when she traditionally dominates and holds four Roland Garros titles to her name.
When the world No. 2 accepted her winner’s trophy in Cincinnati earlier this month, it was notable that the first person she thanked was her coach, Wim Fissette. The two appear to be forging a formidable partnership.
Fissette, who has won majors with Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka, Angelique Kerber and Naomi Osaka, was hired by Swiatek at the end of last year. Since then, he has played an integral role in her resurgence, focusing on a couple of minor technical adjustments.
It took time, as Swiatek dealt with the fallout from serving a one-month ban after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine — which the anti-doping authorities accepted was due to a contaminated batch of melatonin she was using for jet lag. Her form slipped, and she struggled also to cope with the expectations on her shoulders on clay. But the work the pair did in preseason laid the foundations for her comeback.
“I would say after Roland Garros I kind of got back to my usual self,” Swiatek told reporters on the eve of the US Open. “I would say the process of learning all this stuff in preseason kind of came back, and for sure I used it on Wimbledon and on hard court in Cincinnati.”
Swiatek’s bid for a fifth French Open title was ended by Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals, but Fissette’s impact was clear for everyone to see two rounds before. During the fourth-round match against Elena Rybakina, Swiatek was trailing 6-1, 2-0 when Fissette instructed her to take a couple of steps back on return of serve.
It worked immediately, and she went on to beat Rybakina. The momentum was building. When they started working together, Swiatek told Fissette that she struggled on faster courts and after arriving at Wimbledon with more time to prepare than usual, Fissette focused on her footwork.
“We made a little change in the footwork, in general, for faster surfaces,” Fissette told a small group of reporters at Wimbledon. “It was funny because I showed her, and then she tried but was not convinced. Then she asked me to show her some videos but she said, show me realistic videos, not like [Novak] Djokovic or [Carlos] Alcaraz.
“I said to her, you have been the game changer in footwork, so if you want to go again to the next level, it’s better to look at Djokovic or Alcaraz or [Jannik] Sinner as an example. So we kind of did that. And let’s say she was more convinced after that.”
Finding the right coach is not easy, as Osaka and Coco Gauff, who both recently switched coaches, would surely attest to. And when you have spent 125 weeks as world No. 1, it might be hard to accept new ideas. But Fissette quickly learned how to get his ideas across, realizing that language, too, was important.
“Because she always worked with a Polish team, they use very specific words,” Fissette said. “[So it was about] slowly finding which words work for her and which words don’t, because she’s very specific with that to understand something. It was a process which I learned every single week, what is the better way to coach her now on the court, but also during matches. We definitely needed time, but I felt it getting better week by week.”
Swiatek said she enjoys the process of working through ideas with Fissette.
“I’m a bit stubborn,” she said. “So if I have a different idea, then I need for sure some persuasion and also I need some proof. If I’m going to go on court and feel, oh yeah, this is actually working and it helps me, then for sure I’ll go for it. There’s no doubt. If I need some days of practice, there might be some discussion and everything. So Wim also has to be patient. I think he already knows that and he accepts that.
“But everything he said for me made sense, and if it didn’t, then we just have to talk more and he had to explain a bit more. I had to try again and again, and then it started working.”
