Former WTA Player Thinks Wim Fisette Confused Iga Swiatek on Court Before Their Split

Things have gone from bad to worse for Iga Swiatek on tour. Her run of bad results began after she won the Korean Open last September, but she held on to her coach until last week before parting ways with him. Former WTA player Rennae Stubbs has admitted that she saw the split coming months ago.

Swiatek has not been dominant on tour as she was in 2023 and in the first half of the 2024 season. During her best time on tour, she swept aside her opponents with ease. Only Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Coco Gauff, and Jelena Ostapenko were the players who could match her firepower.

But this season, any player in the top 50 seems to give her a hard time. This year, she has never been to the semi-finals of a tournament. In fact, she has not beaten a top 10 player on tour and has gotten over one top 20 player, and that was against Karolina Muchova at the Indian Wells Open last month.

Things got worse for Swiatek at the Miami Open when she fell to fellow Polish star Magda Linette in three sets. After the loss, the former World No.1 criticized her game plan and admitted she was a little bit confused about everything. She currently holds a 12-6 win-loss record and has yet to win a title in over five months.

That led her to announce she has parted ways with coach Wim Fisette after over a year together. In the latest episode of the Rennae Stubbs Tennis podcast, Stubbs noted that Fisette was guilty of always giving Swiatek the wrong instructions during matches which made the World No.4 confused on the court:

I did get the interpretation of what was being yelled on the court and a lot of it was all positive. Stick to the game plan, be positive. And it’s hard when you don’t understand the language and they are yelling back and forth. But a lot of that is also on Iga. You can’t lose your s— like that on the court. You have got to find the answers for yourself. As one of the best players over the last five years, you have to be able to tap into what you know is your best stuff on the court…

Swiatek will be without Fisette ahead of the clay season as she continues her search for a new coach. There are rumors that she could be reunited with her former coach, Tomasz Wiktorowski, who is currently working with former Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka. The rumors began to form after Osaka hinted that she could retire if she kept losing early in tournaments.

Iga Swiatek told she should have split with her coach earlier

Iga Swiatek was under immense pressure from the Polish media to make some changes to her team after a series of bad performances at last year’s clay swing. The 24-year-old was to defend a host of ranking points and failed to do so, which saw her drop outside the Top 5 in the WTA rankings.

However, she continued her partnership with Wim Fisette, and that paid off at the Wimbledon Championship, which she won for the first time in her career. During the aforementioned podcast, Rennae Stubbs believed that Swiatek was supposed to part ways with Fisette earlier, and the Wimbledon triumph saved his job:

Frankly I think if she didn’t win Wimbledon last year, he would have been fired after Wimbledon, then she wins and thinks let’s give it more time, this worked out really well. But her results over the last year have been pretty woeful for someone who was just dominating this game. She has to start looking at how she can get better. I think she needs to improve her serve, I think she needs to get more accurate with the serve.

Several pundits have pointed out that Swiatek has lost her aura on the court. In 2023, players in the women’s circuit feared her, and some even admitted it, but recently that has faded away, and every player is ready to match her firepower.

Also Read: Andrey Rublev Reveals What It’s Like Working with Coach Marat Safin: “Brings a Lot of Calmness and Maturity”

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