Dubbed as the ‘Queen of Clay,’ Iga Swiatek can now also call herself the ‘Queen of Grass’, perhaps! Well, not many had predicted her to win the Wimbledon Championships this year. But Mats Wilander sure knew what he was talking about when he said back in Match that Iga Swiatek can win the grass court Slam “multiple times” even if she doesn’t feel entirely comfortable on the surface. Swiatek looked pretty ordinary on clay this year, but on grass, other than winning the Slam, she also reached the final at the Bad Homburg Open. What’s next for the Pole, though?

Iga Swiatek had previously won the Wimbledon title as a junior in 2018, but with this recent 57-minute 6-0,6-0 victory over Amanda Anisimova in the final, she became only the second woman in the Open Era to win a Grand Slam with this scoreline. After the match, while expressing her true feelings about this victory, Swiatek said, “It’s just surreal. I feel like tennis keeps surprising me, and I keep surprising myself. It means a lot, especially after a season with a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of expectations from the outside.”

Although she refrained from drawing a comparison of this win with her Roland Garros heroics, Swiatek did admit it was “special” and “unexpected.” Currently, the Pole is preparing to kick-start her campaign at the North American hard-court swing. But before stepping onto the court in Montreal, Iga Swiatek was asked if she must be feeling a bit invincible with the way she had performed at Wimbledon this year. Will she bring that feeling to the next tournament, or is she looking to start from zero again? “No, you kind of start from a clean slate for sure,” said the Pole.

Explaining more of that, she added that it’s even harder because when a player is in a tournament rhythm, they tend to kind of just go, but then after a couple of weeks off, when the player makes a comeback on the court, then they feel like they are starting from the beginning. Playing on grass is a “totally different story,” and now in Montreal, she feels she’s starting from a clean slate yet again. However, just weeks before the 2025 US Open, Swiatek shared a very interesting thought. During the same press conference, she added, “I know that even if I play bad till the end of the year, I’m really happy with the season. You know, winning Wimbledon was just, I don’t know, not on my list this year at least. So, yeah, I’m super happy.”

Iga Swiatek had won the US Open title way back in 2022, but ever since then, most of her successes have come on the clay courts of Roland Garros until this year’s Wimbledon. Last year, Swiatek was knocked out of the US Open by Jessica Pegula in the QF. It’ll be interesting to see how far she goes this year.

Serena Williams’ ex-coach makes a bold prediction for Iga Swiatek

Iga Swiatek didn’t sign up for the Canadian Open last year, and hence, she has no points to defend in Montreal. She will face either Yulia Putintseva or a qualifier in her first match in this tournament.  Talking about how Iga Swiatek can make full use of this preparatory stage ahead of the 2025 US Open, Serena Williams‘ childhood coach, Rick Macci, tweeted, “Iga went to another level mentally at Wimbledon. Canada will give us a snapshot if the Polish Punisher is locked, loaded, and ready to launch higher. I say yes, and another level of beast mode and number one for sure down the road.”

Having said that, he also drew a bold comparison by saying, “She has the most authoritative, wicked, brutal angles since the goat Serena the Sledgehammer. At the [US] Open, if these acute grasshoppers continue to bend, she might be [the] last standing at the end.” Can she win yet another major title this season? Time will tell that! But recently, Iga Swiatek made a very honest admission about one of her biggest inspirations in recent times.

Surprisingly, Iga Swiatek stated that she wishes she were more like Carlos Alcaraz and also hailed him to be a “big inspiration“. Is there any specific reason behind choosing Alcaraz out of the rest, though? To this, she further added that she likes how Alcaraz says that the most important thing for him on a tennis court is to enjoy it and have fun, and how sometimes players often forget that with all the pressures around themselves. So, enjoying the game to the fullest will be Swiatek’s new mantra to success, but will it earn her yet another major title this year?