{"id":75825,"date":"2024-11-11T09:30:14","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T14:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=75825"},"modified":"2024-11-11T09:30:14","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T14:30:14","slug":"iga-swiatek-2024-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/11\/11\/iga-swiatek-2024-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Iga Swiatek 2024 Season in\u00a0Review and Expectations for 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Defending champion Iga Swiatek\u2019s journey at the 2024 WTA Finals came to a surprising end when Barbora Krejcikova defeated <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/11\/06\/coco-gauff-iga-swiateks-year-end-world-no-1-hopes\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Coco Gauff<\/a> 7-5 6-4, securing her place in the semifinals and dashing Swiatek&#8217;s hopes of advancing. Despite a dominant 6-1 6-0 victory over Daria Kasatkina earlier in the day, the World No.2\u00a0 was eliminated from the season-ending tournament. Krejcikova&#8217;s win meant that Swiatek could not make it past the group stage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swiatek had surely hoped to defend her title at the WTA Finals in Riyadh, where the top eight women compete. However, after finishing 2-1 in her group, she was ousted due to a complicated round-robin tiebreaker system favoring Krejcikova and Gauff. This early exit marked an unexpected end to a season filled with high expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Iga Swiatek in 2024:<\/h2>\n<h4>Great Start to the Season<\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Swiatek 2024 season was filled with remarkable achievements as the Polish star continued to dominate the women\u2019s tennis circuit. She started the year with strong performances at key tournaments, capturing titles at the Qatar Open, Indian Wells, Madrid Open, Italian Open, and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/french-open\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">the French Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Her triumph at Roland Garros marked <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/06\/08\/iga-swiatek-becomes-4-time-french-open-champion\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">her fourth French Open title<\/a>, cementing her place among the tournament\u2019s elites like Justine Henin. She also achieved a rare feat by completing the Madrid-Rome-French Open sweep, a feat previously accomplished only by Serena Williams in 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swiatek&#8217;s achievements extended beyond traditional tennis titles. She made history by becoming the first Polish tennis player to win an Olympic medal, earning Bronze in singles at the Paris Summer Olympics. With a win-loss record of 61-9 for the year, Swiatek maintained a position at the top of the rankings, holding the World No. 1 spot for over 100 weeks, despite recent competition from Aryna Sabalenka.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"0Wen0_-KTYV5vsFdy85nJQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2165910740\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'0Wen0_-KTYV5vsFdy85nJQ',sig:'J_9xb-rZsI7Xst_T1lY9g757a18YokPi7BPPnG9YiLk=',w:'594px',h:'366px',items:'2165910740',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><b>The Decline after Paris Olympics and losing the World No.1 ranking<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swiatek\u2019s season completely crashed after the Paris Olympics. Although she won the medal, it wasn\u2019t a Gold medal as she had desired. She lost to Qinwen Zheng in the semifinals, who eventually went to seal the winner\u2019s medal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After that heartbreaking loss, Swiatek\u2019s form never recovered as she lost in the quarterfinals of the US Open. After the loss, she decided to change her coach and hired <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2024\/11\/04\/iga-swiatek-game-new-coach\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">>Wim Fissette<\/a>. On the other hand, Sabalenka\u2019s rise saw her topple Swiatek at the top of the WTA rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 2024 WTA Finals were a bittersweet experience for Swiatek. While she delivered a commanding 6-1, 6-0 win against Daria Kasatkina, the result was overshadowed by Krejcikova\u2019s upset victory over Gauff. Swiatek\u2019s performance was one of the best at the event, with the 51-minute match becoming the fastest win at the WTA Finals in eight years. The dominant display served as a reminder of Swiatek&#8217;s excellence on the court, but her hopes of advancing were ultimately dashed, as she needed Gauff to win to progress.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Look Ahead to 2025<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the 2024 season wraps up, Swiatek&#8217;s sights are already set on the 2025 <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/australian-open\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Australian Open<\/a>, where she is expected to be one of the top contenders. While Sabalenka is considered the favorite, Swiatek has the chance to close the gap on her great rival with a deep run in Melbourne. She reached the third round of the Australian Open this year, whereas Sabalenka won the title.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Swiatek needs to prove her prowess in non-clay Grand Slam tournaments. The Pole has won five Grand Slams in her career, and four of them have come at Roland Garros. Swiatek\u2019s only Grand Slam outside Roland Garros came at the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/us-open\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">US Open<\/a> in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Mike Frey-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defending champion Iga Swiatek\u2019s journey at the 2024 WTA Finals came to a surprising end when Barbora Krejcikova defeated Coco Gauff 7-5 6-4, securing her place in the semifinals and dashing Swiatek&#8217;s hopes of advancing. Despite a dominant 6-1 6-0 victory over Daria Kasatkina earlier in the day, the World No.2\u00a0 was eliminated from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5286,"featured_media":63881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,9],"tags":[1766,3976,2747,416,4315,297],"class_list":["post-75825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta","category-featured","category-news","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-barbora-krejcikova","tag-coco-gauff","tag-daria-kasatkina","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-wta-finals"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5286"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}