Despite having a pretty much unexpected run on the clay courts this year, Iga Swiatek surprisingly looked at her best on grass (a surface which she considered her least favorite). She became the first Polish woman to lift the Venus Rosewater Dish at Wimbledon! But this incredible run wouldn’t have been possible without her team. Her coach, Wim Fissette, played a pivotal role in her resurgence after a dry spell over the past twelve months. The 45-year-old Belgian coach comes with vast experience in coaching some of the biggest names in the tennis world.

Before stepping into the coaching field, Fissette played on the ITF Futures tour in 1999 and 2000, where he reached a career-high ATP ranking of number 1,291. His breakthrough as a coach came in 2009 when he guided Kim Clijsters’ three Grand Slam triumphs ( 2x US Open, 1 AO). Other than that, Fissette has coached the likes of Simona Halep, Petra Kvitová, and Angelique Kerber (2018 Wimbledon Championships), but his biggest success after his stint with Clijsters came when he joined Naomi Osaka’s team in 2020. He helped Osaka win the 2020 US Open and the 2021 AO. He has seen plenty of curveballs come his way during his coaching tenure.

Many tennis bigwigs raised their eyebrows when they saw Fissette break his contract abruptly with Qinwen Zheng to rejoin Naomi Osaka’s team in 2023. This left Zheng furious, and she even called this act “very immoral“. However, his second stint with Osaka didn’t last long, and their partnership came to an end in 2024. Reacting to this split, tennis legend, Rennae Stubbs made a very bold claim. She said, “He (Wim Fissette) likes the money. Like, that’s a lot of the I know for a fact. You know, some of the things that got him fired from other jobs was that he wanted more money.” After this fiasco, he has since joined yet another winner’s (Iga Swiatek) camp. In a recent conversation on the Tennis Insider Club, he was asked to highlight the basic difference in coaching a champion and a youngster.

Replying to that, Wim Fissette shed light on the biggest challenges that he has faced in his coaching career, which include working with a completely foreign team. Iga Swiatek’s coach said, “I think every player has their, like, challenges, you know. It’s every project is really different. I think if you have like the division together, you know you go in that direction, and you work together as a team. I think that it is sometimes a bit difficulty in tennis that as a coach, you’re kind of being dropped into a team where like everything is kind of like set. Yeah, I think sometimes it’d be easier, like if you can bring your own people. Like football (soccer), for instance.”

He spoke about having the chance to work with some incredible people who knew how he operates, his vision and his expectations were. Wim Fissette believes that having familiar surroundings helps make things a lot easier for swift and rapid improvements. As per his motto, “To make improvements on the court, a lot of times improvement needs to be made off court.”

Currently, in Iga Swiatek‘s team, he’s the only Belgian while most of them are Polish. Her team includes Daria Abramowicz (psychologist), Maciej Ryszczuk (physio), and Tomek Moczek (hitting partner).

Shortly after announcing Wim Fissette as her new coach, Iga Swiatek stated, “He seems to have a great attitude, vision, and huge experience at a very top level of tennis.” Despite hiccups in the initial stages, Swiatek has recovered pretty well this season. What did Fissette say after Swiatek’s Wimbledon triumph, though?

Wim Fissette heaps praise on Iga Swiatek after her Wimbledon triumph

Wim Fissette joined as Tomasz Wiktorowski’s replacement on Iga Swiatek’s team in October last year. Talking about his goals after joining the Polish team, Fissette revealed that their primary ambition was to do better on the faster surfaces. He highlighted how Iga Swiatek can improve a bit on her serve. Having said that, the Belgian coach also added, “I feel sometimes when it goes fast, she tries to play faster than her opponent, which is not really her game, so she should stay true to herself on the faster surfaces.”

However, at Wimbledon, Swiatek was quite impressive when it came to her serves, and in the final, all three key metrics were above 70%. So, Wim Fissette has now already accomplished his “goal” and that too within less than a year!

While congratulating Iga Swiatek on her incredible title triumph, he shared a message on his IG post, saying, “When the Clay Court Queen turns into a Grass Court Lover. Congrats @iga.swiatek on winning @wimbledon. A very special place to win our first title together! Jazda! (Let’s go in Polish).” How different has it been for him to coach someone like Swiatek in comparison to others like Naomi Osaka?

Well, as per Fissette, the difference from Osaka to Swiatek is more like “day and night“; the approach, and their personalities are completely different. He claimed that Iga Swiatek requires blunt and direct information, facts. She wants to hear everything, even if it’s not good. She wants to be corrected on every ball. Every player has their different strategy, but can Wim Fissette help Iga Swiatek win the US Open title this year?