‘I didn’t play good tennis’: Iga Swiatek reacts after shock defeat against Alize Cornet at Wimbledon 2022

Iga Swiatek has one of the sharpest minds in women`s tennis but admitted she confused herself with her tactics in a shock defeat by Alize Cornet in the Wimbledon third round on Saturday. The Pole was red-hot favourite for the title and was on a 37-match winning streak heading into her clash with Cornet, but hit 33 unforced errors in a dismal 6-4 6-2 defeat.

“What can I say? I know I didn`t play good tennis. I was pretty confused about my tactics,” she said. “As a solid player, she used that pretty well. It wasn`t good performance for me.”

Swiatek fell 3-0 behind in the opener before finding her feet and was 2-0 ahead in the second set only to lose six successive games and crash out on Court One.

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Asked to explain how she lost the last six games without putting up much resistance, she said: “Usually when I`m coming back, I have some kind of a plan and I know what to change. Here I didn`t know what to change. I was confused.

“On grass court everything happens so quickly. Basically, the thing that I changed this season is I started being more and more aggressive. It was really comfortable for me to have the initiative and be proactive.

“But here I couldn`t control the ball. So I needed to slow down a little bit. Then in the second set, I kind of made few attempts to speed up again, and it didn`t work out.”

Twice French Open champion Swiatek had not looked totally comfortable in her opening two rounds and the 21-year-old was taken to three sets on Thursday by lucky loser from qualifying Lesley Pattinama Kerkhove. In the build-up to Wimbledon she did not compete on grass and admits that the surface is still a puzzle.

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“I tried many things to feel better on court, on grass courts, but it didn`t really work out,” she said.

“That`s why I`m not even hard on myself because, it`s kind of logic that if I couldn`t find it even on practices, I`m not going to find it in a match.”

At the end of a streak that matched Martina Hingis`s in the 1997 season, she said she would look back with pride.

“Right now even I am satisfied with this streak, so I`m happy that I was able to do that,” she said.