For most tennis players, a period like Iga Swiatek’s last nine months will be a resounding success. The Pole won her maiden Wimbledon, the worthiest trophy the sport has to offer, clinched a WTA 1000 title in Cincinnati and bagged a WTA 500 crown in Seoul.

Wimbledon was her first title of any kind in over 12 months, and from a ranking of No. 8 just before the title run at the All England Club, she zoomed up to No. 2 in the world, a position she held until early last month.

‘Worst nightmare’

But Swiatek, herself, doesn’t believe this is enough. After an opening round reverse to compatriot and the then World No. 50 Magda Linette in Miami in March, a result the six-time Major champion called “the worst nightmare”, she decided to split with coach Wim Fissette, who was with her when the 24-year-old achieved all of the above results.

Fissette, who had had stints with Grand Slam winners such as Kim Clijsters, Simona Halep, Victoria Azarenka, Angelique Kerber and Naomi Osaka, had joined forces with Swiatek in October 2024, and helped her navigate a reputation-hurting, month-long suspension later that year for a positive dope test.

But none of this seemed to matter, and Swiatek, who will begin her beloved clay-court season at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart this week, has announced that she is pairing up with Francisco Roig, a long-time coach of Rafael Nadal, and someone who was part of the Spanish legend’s team for 18 years and all of his 22 Major singles titles.

So what explains Swiatek’s quandary? For one, she did not believe that the results were there to prove that the partnership with Fissette was working. Though she secured three titles last year, reached another final and climbed her way back up the rankings, the successes were concentrated in a narrow three-month window from late-June to late-September.

In seven individual competitions after the trophy-winning achievement in Seoul, Swiatek has not progressed past the quarterfinal. She has lost seven of her last eight matches against top-10 opponents, and two of her three most-recent defeats have come against those ranked 50 or below — Linette, and Maria Sakkari (No. 52) in Doha. The Linette loss was her first in the opening round since the 2021 WTA Finals. Together with the disappointment at Indian Wells, it was also the third time in the last five months that she had conceded back-to-back matches, and this too last happened at the same WTA Finals.

The trigger

“During the tournament in Doha, I realised that I didn’t feel as good on the court as before,” Swiatek told Polish media house Sport.pl. “Of course, at different tournaments, there can be various reasons for poor form, but I had the impression that I wasn’t playing that well, and started to lose confidence.

“After the loss to Sakkari, we sat down and talked for a long time. We wondered what to change and how to approach the following week so that I could get back to my solid game. And indeed, before Indian Wells, we took some steps forward. But when I took everything into account, I concluded that I needed a change.”

The use of the words “solid game” was intriguing. When she first burst onto the scene in 2020 by winning her maiden French Open as a teenager, Swiatek was a quintessential counter-puncher, sporting a top-spin heavy game and blessed with supreme athleticism.

Then, from 2022 to 2024 under coach Tomasz Wiktorowski, she infused significant amounts of no-holds-barred baseline aggression into her tennis as she amassed four Slams and spent 125 weeks as World No. 1 – the seventh best run in women’s tennis history and the most among active players.

Aggression for Swiatek is not similar to the flat power that someone like Elena Rybakina hits with but closer to the ‘Nadalesque’ way of risk-taking and bravery shown in attacking the lines. The best reflection of this came in 2022, when she went on a 37-match winning streak – still the best this century – and lifted two Majors.

In fact, in the 76 matches she played that year, she won 22 sets by a 6-0 margin and 20 by 6-1. She was named the WTA Player of the Year in 2022, and bagged the honour again a year later.

But this style also had a downside to it. When a ground-stroke broke down, match-situation tightened and she was boxed into a corner, Swiatek’s solution to break out of jail was to become more aggressive.

While champions often swear by this attitude, it is not a prudent choice when errors pile up and the need of the hour is a reset.

Nowhere is this reflected better than in her match-up against the two-time Slam winner from America Coco Gauff, who counts as her strengths some remarkable retrieving ability and propensity to extend rallies. Swiatek won 11 of their first 12 meetings, but has lost all four since then, and all of them in straight sets.

Under Fissette, she attempted to temper her play a bit, seeking to add variety and patience, and tried unlocking different dimensions.

The first signs of this working came at the 2025 Australian Open when she came within a point of making her first-ever final in Melbourne before losing a tight three-setter to eventual winner Madison Keys. “I feel like the ball is listening to me,” she said during the tournament.

Finding full expression

The summer of 2025 was when her partnership with Fissette found full expression as she won Wimbledon, thrashing Amanda Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 in a 57-minute final — a glorious display of controlled aggression and tactical nous.

At one point during the fortnight she even said: “You can still raise your intensity and be patient, and make smart decisions. It just means that you’re going to play these shots really 100%. But it doesn’t mean that they need to be like crazy.”

The current predicament for Swiatek is that this makeover has started fraying and she is unable to decide which facets in her evolution as a player are worth keeping and which are to be tweaked or shunned altogether.

After Miami, she said she was “confused” and that tennis felt “complicated”. That perhaps explains her desire to get back to the solid variety.

“I want to feel like a wall on the court again — making no mistakes and forcing my opponents to make them,” she elaborated to Sport.pl. “I’ve always had that. It was my advantage and I exerted pressure on the court, and it gave me the upper hand.

“I feel that tennis gives me the most pleasure when I am solid. When I’m not, I take unnecessary risks and make many more errors. I want to return to that solidity. I’d like to have more variety in my game, and sometimes use what I do in training during matches — to have the courage to make those decisions. But for now, I’m focusing mainly on the first part: hard work and building solidity.”

Swiatek has trusted Spaniard Roig, in pic, for this task, and his body of work suggests — at least on paper — that he may be the right person.

“The ideal coach should have an ‘eye’ for the game and an intuition of what the player needs, both in the short- and long-term,” Swiatek said recently. “[The coach] should make the right decisions as to when to introduce new shots, when to start changes in the game, and when to build the game on the player’s strengths.”

Ring-side view

Roig had a ring-side view for the entirety of Nadal’s career, and has both seen — and aided — the legend’s evolution from a clay-court expert to an all-surface master. Swiatek famously idolises Nadal, and her favourite surface is clay, as seen from the fact that four of her six Majors are on the Parisian red dirt. But her triumphs at the 2022 US Open and 2025 Wimbledon show that she has space to grow.

Locked in two of the greatest rivalries with Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, Nadal developed a style that was offensive and at the same time firm. Roig, alongside Nadal’s uncle Toni and former World No. 1 Carlos Moya, is said to have had a big hand in the 14-time Roland-Garros winner consistently staying ahead of the curve.

This aspect will be important, for women’s tennis is no longer in a state of flux, and is fast developing consistent rivalries.

Aryna Sabalenka has been the world’s best since October 21, 2024 — the day Swiatek relinquished the top spot — and the four-time Slam winner from Belarus has reached the semifinals or better in 12 of her previous 13 Major appearances.

Gauff and Rybakina have both shed the tag of one-Slam wonders by securing the 2025 French Open and 2026 Australian Open respectively.

Statistically, Swiatek sits above all of them. The time has come to show why.