Iga Swiatek told to ‘suck it up’ by Martina Navratilova after admitting her ‘tank is empty’
Iga Swiatek has recently revealed that she is feeling mentally and physically tired, but former No.1 Martina Navratilova has told the Pole to ‘suck it up’ or not defend her US Open title.
Swiatek headed into her Cincinnati Masters semi-final with a 7-0 win-loss record over Coco Gauff, and had in-fact never dropped a set to the American teenager.
However, she was beaten by the eventual champion of the WTA 1000 event, 6(2)-7 6-3 4-6, and admitted that she was feeling ‘pretty empty’ after the match.
“Well, from my perspective I would say my tank of fuel is pretty empty,” revealed the 22-year-old. “Honestly, I’m not even going to kind of regret a lot because I’m happy that I’m going to have days off now.”
Navratilova believes that Swiatek playing her home WTA 250 event in Poland could be the cause of this, “The stress on the players, I understand that – and Iga being Polish she had to play Warsaw. Normally, if she wasn’t Polish, she would have never played [that event] and would have taken an extra couple of weeks of rest so maybe that’s why she’s tired.”
Swiatek has played the most matches (62) on the WTA tour this year, but Navratilova does not appear to be too sympathetic of this.
“But I still have to say, ‘Come on, just suck it up’. It’s September, you didn’t play that many tournaments and this is the US Open.” So if you can’t get up for that… if you’re that mentally tired, don’t play,” said Navratilova.
The 18-time major singles champion continued, “Take the time off and concentrate on the season-ending tournament. Just take the time off. Force yourself to take the vacation. That’s okay. I never gave myself permission to do that, never occurred to me that I could do that.
“Or just get on with it and say, ‘Okay, I’m fine. It’s just two weeks, it’s seven matches, I literally have to work hard [for] maybe 20 hours, these next two weeks.'”
Iga Swiatek will begin the defence of her US Open title against Rebecca Peterson, as she opens up Arthur Ashe on Monday.
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