Iga Swiatek (Image: Getty)
Iga Swiatek has revealed the most embarrassing moment of her career involving toilet paper before facing at the .
The five-time Grand Slam champion reached the third round by thrashing Slovakia’s Rebecca Sramkova 6-0 6-2 in only an hour.
The Pole has now won her last 40 matches in the first two rounds at a Grand Slam.
But the world No.2 has admitted not everything in her career has gone so smoothly – and she served a one-month doping ban last year after testing positive for a sleeping tablet.
Tennis Australia Hot Shot kids were invited to pose questions in the press conferences today – and the reigning French Open champion was asked for her most embarrassing moment on court, Swiatek said: “I cried plenty of times. Yeah, it was a bit embarrassing. I had a match when I cried for ten minutes I think. I wasn’t able to just play tennis, you know.
“Also, I went out on court once in Indian Wells with toilet paper sticking to my leg off my skirt. That was also embarrassing.”
Swiatek has beaten Raducanu three times without dropping a set, the last time in the quarter-final in Stuttgart on the clay last year where the first set went to a tiebreak.
“For sure it’s going to be a tough one,” said the No.2 seed. “Emma can play great tennis. We all know that. I’ll just prepare as before any other match. For sure (coach) Wim (Fissette) will watch these matches that we played, because I don’t know if he saw them before since we weren’t working together yet. I’ll prepare tomorrow, and I’ll be ready.”
Iga Swiatek will face Emma Raducanu in round three (Image: Getty)
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Former world No.10 Raducanu is now down to world No.61 but Swiatek added: “Honestly there’s no point to look at rankings, especially when you have these great players that already, you know, have been through great tournaments and won some tournaments. You know that they can play well.
“Maybe they’re not consistent to have the ranking, but still, you need to be on your toes and ready because you don’t know what they’ll show this week. So, no, I don’t look at rankings at all.”
Swiatek won her first Grand Slam – and WTA title – as a 19-year-old when she claimed the 2020 French Open. She was ranked world No.54 at the time to become the lowest-ranked winner of the claycourt Grand Slam. Raducanu was 18 and ranked world No.150 when she won the 2021 US Open as a qualifier.
“Oh, yeah, for sure it’s hard. I think, I don’t know, even sometimes when I lose some matches, I realize that people just expect me to win because I won so much earlier, you know, that they got used to it.
“But no, this is constant work and taking care of many things also off the court and having good people around you, managing your whole life basically so you can play good and consistently. Everybody’s story is different, and everybody struggle with different stuff, but it doesn’t matter.
“When we’re going to be out there on the court, whoever is going to play better will win, and that’s it. I’ll just focus on tennis. For sure we have different stories, but before the match, I’m not going to really think about that. I’ll just prepare based on how she plays now and that’s it.”