{"id":612983,"date":"2026-04-29T09:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T09:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/612983\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T09:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T09:12:15","slug":"iga-swiatek-sends-honest-message-after-retiring-due-to-a-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/612983\/","title":{"rendered":"Iga Swiatek sends honest message after retiring due to a virus\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>World No 4 Iga Swiatek has shared a message on social media after she was forced to retire at the 2026 Madrid Open on what she described as \u201ca real rough day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The six-time Grand Slam champion retired due to a virus when trailing 6-7(4), 6-2, 0-3 against world No 34 Ann Li in the third round in Madrid.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tag\/iga-swiatek\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Swiatek<\/a> is next set to compete at the Italian Open, which will be held from 5 to 17 May. The former world No 1 won the WTA 1000 tournament in Rome in 2021, 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on her Instagram account, Swiatek wrote: \u201cWhat can I say? It was a real rough day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt stings not having full control over my performance or being in charge of every decision.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday is a bit better and I\u2019ll take the next day or two to recover fully. Then we\u2019ll push forward with more hard work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m pretty excited for the next one in Rome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>WTA Tour News<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tennis-features\/madrid-open-2026-iga-swiateks-ranking-points-prize-money\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Madrid Open: Iga Swiatek\u2019s ranking points and prize money from WTA 1000 event<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tennis-news\/alex-eala-withdraws-tournament-after-madrid-open-next-event-confirmed\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Eala withdraws from tournament after Madrid Open exit as her next event is confirmed<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Want more from Tennis365? Add us as\u00a0<a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=tennis365.com\" target=\"_blank\">a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a>\u00a0for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/p>\n<p>Tennis legend Boris Becker, a former world No 1 and winner of six majors, replied to Swiatek\u2019s post.<\/p>\n<p>The German wrote: \u201cDon\u2019t be too hard on yourself!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven the greatest champions lose sometimes\u2026 you have great people by your side! Upwards and Onwards IGA.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following her retirement in Madrid, Swiatek said:\u00a0\u201cI\u2019ve been feeling awful for the last two days. I think I have some kind of virus. Some hours I\u2019ve been fine, but other times I\u2019ve been feeling really bad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve heard there\u2019s something going around in the locker room, a virus that\u2019s out there somewhere. I know I\u2019ll be fine in a couple of days, but today I felt like I had zero energy, zero stability.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been feeling really bad physically; yesterday was even worse. I thought maybe things would be better today, and maybe they were, but not enough to play that much.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew it was going to be tough, but I still wanted to try, because I\u2019ve been sick a couple of times in my career and I was able to win most of my matches. It depended on how bad I was going to feel, and this time it was quite a bit worse than the previous times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>READ NEXT: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennis365.com\/tennis-news\/iga-swiatek-rankings-collapse-utr-rankings\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Iga Swiatek suffers big rankings collapse in alternative tennis list<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World No 4 Iga Swiatek has shared a message on social media after she was forced to retire&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-612983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}