{"id":477656,"date":"2026-03-15T22:52:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T22:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/477656\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T22:52:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T22:52:13","slug":"iga-swiatek-sets-off-alarm-bells-as-indian-wells-loss-brings-unwanted-low-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/477656\/","title":{"rendered":"Iga Swiatek sets off alarm bells as Indian Wells loss brings unwanted low | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iga Swiatek<\/a> has worryingly admitted that she \u201ccouldn\u2019t pull herself out of it\u201d after a poor performance in Indian Wells. The two-time former champion suffered a 6-2 4-6 6-4 defeat to Elina Svitolina<\/a> in the quarter-finals and has now lost five straight matches to top-10 opposition for the first time in her career.<\/p>\n

Swiatek left the court after losing the first set and was able to regroup, but still couldn\u2019t do enough to beat Svitolina. And the world No. 2 has now admitted that she never felt comfortable on the court, even when she forced a decider.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Canal+ after her shock loss, Swiatek said: “Honestly, it’s hard for me to sensibly describe this match, because I played really poorly from the start. I couldn’t pull myself out of it. Every time I tried to make some more intuitive decision and just play my game, the balls were totally flying away from me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the second set, I started winning… well, I actually don’t know why, because I just started pushing the balls and wasn’t playing the way I wanted to. Later, when I tried to execute some of the plans I had and just play my game, I started making errors again. I don’t know, maybe it would’ve been a better decision to stick with pushing the ball over the net, but it’s hard to play like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played poorly from start to finish. I don’t want to take anything away from Elina here, but I think she felt herself that it wasn’t a fun match. Either way, congratulations to her for winning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swiatek survived a wobble to beat Kayla Day in her opening match and appeared to be growing into the tournament as she stormed past Maria Sakkari and Karolina Muchova to make the quarters<\/a>. But that changed against Svitolina, and she hit eight double faults during the two-hour and nine-minute contest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe matches with Sakkari and Muchov\u00e1awere really good, but the goal in tennis is to maintain that form until the end of the tournament. It’s really hard for me to explain such a difference in form. It was just a bad day,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also don’t know if it was faster on that second court or not, but my timing was completely off. In the previous days, I didn’t even have to work on it much, because I just felt the court and the ball really well. In the match with Svitolina, I didn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world No. 2 also took to Instagram<\/a> to address her fans after a tough loss to Svitolina. \u201cYesterday\u2019s match didn\u2019t go the way I wanted. Not my best day, not best performance for sure. It\u2019s tough, but these situations are part of sports life. Thank you all for the support. The hard work doesn\u2019t stop. See you in Miami,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Swiatek is a former champion in Miami, completing the \u2018Sunshine Double\u2019 \u2013 winning Indian Wells and the Miami Open back-to-back \u2013 in 2022. And she\u2019ll be hoping to regroup as she heads to Florida for the second half of the double.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iga Swiatek has worryingly admitted that she \u201ccouldn\u2019t pull herself out of it\u201d after a poor performance in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[158429,26675,810,30732,101,169971,169970,118,872,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-477656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-bnp-paribas-open","tag-elina-svitolina","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-indian-wells","tag-sports","tag-svitolina-vs-swiatek","tag-swiatek-vs-svitolina","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}