Iga Swiatek said Friday it would be a dream to complete a career Grand Slam at the Australian Open but “grinding” through the first round was the Polish star’s focus.<\/p>\n
The world number two has won four French Opens, the US Open and Wimbledon, but a title at Melbourne Park has proved elusive.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old has made the semi-finals twice but never gone further.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, since the beginning of the year, there are many people coming to me and talking to me about it,” she said of completing a sweep of all the majors.<\/p>\n
“I’m really just focusing on day-by-day work. This is how it’s always been for me.<\/p>\n
“This is how I actually was able to achieve the success that I already have, just focusing really on grinding match by match.”<\/p>\n
She added that winning Grand Slams was “tough” and she had no expectations in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
“Obviously it would be a dream come true (a career Grand Slam),” she said.<\/p>\n
“But this is not my clear goal that I wake up with. I’m thinking more about how I want to play, what I want to improve.”<\/p>\n
Swiatek<\/a> will open her campaign against Chinese qualifier Yuan Yue<\/a> after a mixed start to her season.<\/p>\n While she enjoyed success as part of the Poland team that won the United Cup in Sydney, she suffered back-to-back singles losses.<\/p>\n After crashing 6-4, 6-2 to American Coco Gauff<\/a>, Swiatek then slumped 3-6, 6-0, 6-3 against Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The Sydney matches weren’t the smoothest ones. It wasn’t an easy start,” she said.<\/p>\n “I think I still need to work on some stuff.<\/p>\n “Overall I think it’s also going to be about the mentality and if I’m going to be able to go on court and just enjoy playing and give this extra energy, bring the intensity and be there every point.<\/p>\n “Not really care if I’m going to make some mistakes or something will not work. Just go forward and try to push.<\/p>\n “So I’m working on all of this stuff. Hopefully it’s going to be fine.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iga Swiatek said Friday it would be a dream to complete a career Grand Slam at the Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-414013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}