{"id":407288,"date":"2026-01-12T01:10:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T01:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/407288\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T01:10:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T01:10:06","slug":"swiatek-quashes-performance-fears-ahead-of-ao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/407288\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiatek quashes performance fears ahead of AO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek are the two top-ranked women\u2019s players heading into the 2026 Australian Open, but their Sunday night matches couldn\u2019t have been further apart.<\/p>\n

While Sabalenka\u2019s ended with a trophy lift<\/a> and 22nd career title with victory in Brisbane, Swiatek\u2019s ended in tears as the world no.2<\/a> suffered another defeat ahead of the first grand slam of the year.<\/p>\n

\"World<\/p>\n

World no.2 Iga Swiatek in her match against Belinda Bencic on Sunday night.Credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n

The shining light for Swiatek was that Poland went on to win the United Cup final<\/a>, despite her three-set capitulation to Switzerland\u2019s Belinda Bencic, and she eventually lifted a trophy after the nation was the tournament bridesmaids in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

But a racquet toss as she entered the team box after her match just about summed up Swiatek\u2019s results ahead of the Australian Open, and she now heads to Melbourne Park with back-to-back losses after also falling to Coco Gauff on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

But by time Swiatek and team Poland hit the press conference room just shy of 1am, anger and frustration had been replaced with elation, and the world no.2 was quick to quash concerns about her health after she was left in tears on court twice this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is fine, just super sore. I guess, first tournament of the year it costs everybody a bit differently than during the season, but I had a similar experience last year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll just get good recovery, a couple of days off. Also, I know these team events, I love them, but they really take a lot of energy from you, so I still need to figure out how to balance that maybe in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I get so excited on the bench that it\u2019s almost like playing a match. It\u2019s all good, I for sure, physically wasn\u2019t in the second set the best version of myself and I definitely used it to push me, but for sure I\u2019ll try to get that covered before Australian Open.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek are the two top-ranked women\u2019s players heading into the 2026 Australian Open, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-407288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}