Martina Navratilova recently shared her assessment of Iga Swiatek’s early exit from the Wimbledon Championships following her defeat to Alexandra Eala.
Swiatek’s title defense ended in a third-round matchup, which lasted two hours and 14 minutes. Eala claimed a remarkable 7-6(9), 6-2 victory, earning a spot in the fourth round. Speaking on the Tennis Channel after the match, the 18-time Grand Slam singles champion shared her verdict, stating Swiatek was “not good emotionally.”
“I think the recipe [for Eala] was to mix up the serves. Hit a lot of body serves into the Swiatek forehand or backhand, and she just could not figure out how to return better serves. She did not get those break points, and she defended really well. And Swiatek, quite frankly, was not good emotionally. She was just so up and down; she could not keep it together today,” Navratilova said.
Swiatek began her Wimbledon campaign on Tuesday with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 win over Taylor Townsend. She then defeated Karolina Pliskova (6-1, 6-3) in the second round on Thursday to advance to the third round.
Iga Swiatek reflected on her match against Alexandra Eala at Wimbledon
After her defeat to Eala, Iga Swiatek weighed in on her performance during the press conference. Calling her opponent “brave,” she admitted that the match didn’t go her way, describing it as a “tough” match.
“You know it was as you said, tough match, and I felt like Alexandra was more brave in important moments in the tiebreak. We both had many chances to close the set earlier. And it didn’t go my way. So, but overall I feel like I played better than Bad Homburg anyway. Just got to move forward,” said Iga Swiatek.
“I think it was tougher mentally for me to accept this missed returns from the slow serves. I got to say it’s much tougher to return a serve like that than the normal serve. I know it was slow. I know exactly how it’s going to come to me, but it’s such a different rhythm than what I usually have a chance to return that the first serve was not that I mean it was a good fight, and I know that it’s hard to such a long set, and I know that one ball here or there could change a lot, but I wanted to be present in the second set.
“But I made some unforced errors at the beginning, and then I felt like she was serving slower and slower, and it became tougher and tougher for me to return these serves, and that was for me hard to accept.”
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