2024 WTA Player of the Year Countdown, No. 2: Iga Swiatek

2024, by the Numbers

• 61-9: Overall win-loss record
• 15-3: Grand Slam win-loss record (AO3R, RG 🏆, W 3R, USO QF)
• 5: Titles (Doha, Indian Wells, Madrid, Rome, Roland Garros)
• 1: Olympic medal (bronze)
• 2: Year-end ranking

The Story of the Season

Call Iga Swiatek’s 2024 a three-sided story. The clay side was typically magnificent. In the Madrid final versus Aryna Sabalenka, Swiatek fought off three championship points to win one of the best matches of the year. Next, a title in Rome.

Swiatek’s spring swing culminated at Roland Garros. There too, she recovered from the brink in the second round, overcoming a match point against Naomi Osaka. Following that match, Swiatek won ten straight sets to earn her fourth Roland Garros title in the last five years. Later, she returned to Paris and won a bronze medal at the Olympics.

Side two was highlighted by hardcourt titles in Doha and Indian Wells, each without the loss of a set.

But side three generated troubling questions. At the Australian Open and Wimbledon, Swiatek lost in the third round, in Melbourne to 50th-ranked Linda Noskova, at the All England Club to No. 35 Yulia Putintseva. She then lost in the quarterfinals of the US Open to fellow top tenner Jessica Pegula. In each loss, Swiatek was often overpowered and more emotionally fragile than one would expect from someone usually so formidable. Swiatek’s tactical vulnerability—particularly her lack of comfort in the transition territory—was also disturbing.

After finishing number one for two straight years, Swiatek completed ’24 at number two. Added to the mix was the fuzziness around the timing of her drug-related suspension. Now we’ll see even more what answers this eternally studious player brings to the tennis classroom.—Joel Drucker

What’s to Come in 2025?

We’ve seen it countless times among the most elite of players: The horizon is clear, the t’s are crossed and the i’s are dotted, all is going really well - until it’s not. That’s the situation in which Iga Swiatek, who spent most of 2025 ranked No. 1, finds herself. She has a lot on her plate if she hopes to reclaim the honor she surrendered top ranking honors to Aryna Sabalenka in October.

First, though, let’s usher the elephant out of the room. The 23-year old Polish star missed the Asian swing (setting the stage for Sabalenka’s ascent) due to a one-month doping suspension after testers found a minute amount of a banned substance in the melatonin Swiatek said she was using to combat jet lag.

A power lag may be more of a problem for Swiatek heading into 2025. The 5-foot-9 righthander, already a five-time Grand Slam singles champion, has the most well-balanced, versatile game on the WTA Tour. But in tennis power still rules, and nobody applies force quite like Sabalenka. She can take the racquet out of anyone’s hands. Her style borders on reckless abandon, but she’s also grown less profligate.

Swiatek won two of her three meetings with Sabalanka last year, but one of them was a barnburner decided in an overtime third-set tiebreaker in Madrid on Swiatek’s favorite surface, clay.

Then there’s the threat posed by Coco Gauff, whose greatest asset is her athleticism. Swiatek is an excellent mover, but Gauff is more explosive. It’s easy to forget that Gauff is still just 20-years old, her game still saddled with some rough edges. But after a disappointing US Open, Gauff ended the year on a 13-2 run, which included a round-robin win over Swiatek as Gauff claimed the WTA Finals title.

The trigger for the streak was a coaching change, as Gauff replaced Brad Gilbert with Matt Daly). In early October, Swiatek went the same route, dismissing Tomasz Wiktorowski to partner with well-traveled Wim Fissette.

Swiatek’s first big test will be in Melbourne, Australia, where defending champion Sabalenka will be the favorite and Gauff will feel comfortable on hard courts.—Pete Bodo