Following victory in the United Cup, Iga Swiatek notched another win in her Australian summer with a 7‑6(5), 6‑3 win over Chinese qualifier Yue Yuan. Still, the overall win aside, it’s the losses she suffered during the United Cup that have everyone questioning her form.

Especially her loss to Coco Gauff in the United Cup semifinals, where Gauff beat her 6‑4, 6‑2, marking her fourth straight win over Swiatek in straight sets. So, after her win over Yuan, Swiatek was asked about her recent losses to Gauff and how much they weigh on her mind ahead of the clash.

“Honestly, it doesn’t. And even when I was winning against her, it didn’t. That’s why I guess it was, you know, possible for me to continue because I  wasn’t like taking it for granted or, I don’t know, coming to a match unfocused,” said Swiatek.

“I guess it kind of tells you something more about maybe the game or things you should work on or improve. Because you know, also she improved. So yeah, but the head-to-head I guess, doesn’t really matter,” added the 24-year-old.

Historically, Iga Swiatek once dominated her head-to-head against Gauff, leading 11‑1, but over the past year and a half, the gap has narrowed to 11‑5. Only Jelena Ostapenko has beaten Swiatek four times in a row in her career, though three of those matches went to three sets. But Swiatek emphasized that she treats each match separately:

“Maybe for her, if you ask her the same question is different. But I guess… I just really want to treat every match as a separate, you know, story and every match also is in different conditions. So there’s no point to like always come back and you know last time we played was Madrid.”

That match was at the 2025 Mutua Madrid Open, where Coco Gauff defeated Swiatek 6‑1, 6‑1 in the semifinals on clay. That lopsided loss could have weighed heavily, but Swiatek views it as a distant memory.

“It was like over, you know, six months. It’s kind of long in tennis life… So it’s not like a whole story for me… how she feels and how we’re going to play against each other,” Iga Swiatek added, showing a mindset focused entirely on the present, an approach that directly connects to how Gauff has grown in the rivalry.

Coco Gauff finally beats Iga Swiatek in a mindset battle

Coco Gauff has been steadily closing the gap in her rivalry with Iga Swiatek, and the American star is now speaking openly about how she overcame the mental challenges that used to hold her back. Earlier in their careers, Gauff often began matches against Swiatek with a mental deficit – feeling intimidated by the Pole’s dominance.

 Iga Swiatek once held an 11‑1 lead in their head-to-head record, with Gauff winning only two sets in those 12 encounters and her sole match win coming at Cincinnati in 2023. But everything changed at the 2024 WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia, where Gauff claimed her first straight-sets victory over Swiatek.

Since then, she has added three more straight-set wins, including a recent triumph at the United Cup. That success has shrunk Iga Swiatek’s once-dominant lead from 11‑1 to 11‑5, giving Gauff confidence whenever she steps onto the court against the six-time Grand Slam champion.

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After her Australian Open first-round win in 2026, Gauff said on how she turned things around: “In the past I used to think about it so much because you just wanna get the one win and once I got that I kind of erased the other matches… Obviously, she’s a great player, and she deserved those wins. But I felt like some of those losses, I won’t say a lot, because she did outplay me, but some of them, at least in the beginning, it was already in the mental deficit.”

She added, “I think once I erased that mental deficit, I was able to play freely. There was like no other head-to-head in tennis where I had that, so it was very difficult to navigate.

Swiatek and Gauff are both playing well at the Australian Open, and if they meet, it won’t just be about skill, it’ll be a true mental battle in a rivalry that’s become one of the sport’s most exciting battles.