Iga Swiatek had to wait for more than a year to win a title, having last emerged victorious at the 2024 Roland Garros. But the recent months were overwhelming in more ways than one. It wasn’t just on-court struggles that hampered her journey, but the off-court noises too. Many, including tennis insider Jon Wertheim, speculated that her doping saga had impacted her deeply. And her constant setbacks across the events seemed only to fuel that speculation. That, however, was far from the only off-court chatter surrounding her.

She also lost her grandfather during this period, and her 1-6, 1-6 semi-final defeat to Coco Gauff in Madrid led the media to theorize how the personal loss, too, might have affected her performance. Doubts kept piling on as Aryna Sabalenka breached her Parisian fortress. The Pole, however, refused to stay down and silenced skeptic minds with an unlikely victory at Wimbledon. And now that she’s set for another slam of the year in New York, the grass queen has spoken on the most annoying “misconception” about her. 

Following her dominating comeback at Wimbledon, where she won the trophy with a historic double bagel in the final, the Pole is now gearing up for her first event. She recently landed in Montreal, where the six-time slam winner will compete at the National Bank Open. It’s a two-week WTA 1000 tournament. Ahead of her campaign, she cleared all the doubts while shutting down concerns about her mental health. When asked regarding the biggest misconception about her, Swiatek told TVA Sports, “I would say for the past months the biggest misconception in some media back home was that I am depressed or sad. So that wasn’t true.”

She kept going and added, “People just came to some conclusions out of nowhere or out of 15 minutes that I was frustrated or sad on the court. So, or I heard a lot that I am burnt out which also wasn’t and isn’t true.” The former World No.1 concluded saying, “So yeah, but these are I wouldn’t say misconceptions, they are just like theory that sometimes media creates to get more clicks.”

Following her Wimbledon triumph, Swiatek became the first Polish woman to lift the Venus Rosewater Dish. But it seems like many of the outlets back home raised fingers on her prior to this milestone. Well, she had a fitting response.

Wimbledon star Iga Swiatek speaks on Polish media treamtment

It took Iga Swiatek just 57 minutes to hand a historic double bagel to Amanda Anisimova and clinch her first grass court Grand Slam title. The crowd witnessed a storm on the Centre Court. While that was the Pole’s on-court response to doubters, she later spoke about constant criticism from her own country, too. Especially the media outlets that kept questioning her tennis skills in the months gone by.

“Honestly, the thing is that we as public people and as athletes, we can’t, you know, really react to everything what’s going on and we got to focus on ourselves. Obviously, sometimes it’s easier to do that, sometimes it’s harder.” Did she hold back? No. Expressing her unfiltered feelings, Swiatek said, “Polish media, how they treated me and my team, it wasn’t really pleasant. So, I hope they will just leave me alone and let me do my job because obviously you can see that we know what we’re doing, and I have the best people around me.” Well said.

As of now, Swiatek would like to focus only on her game. Montreal will prove to be a massive opportunity to adapt to the hard court. It’s because the US Open is about to kick off later next month. The Pole’s already won the title in New York back in 2022. She will look to end this season with back-to-back major titles.