"I felt that I don’t want to lose instead of I want to win": Swiatek admits pressure of World Number One tag got to her in Rybakina defeat

Iga Swiatek admitted after losing to Rybakina that she cracked under pressure desperately trying to avoid defeat instead of wanting to win.

Swiatek has been outspoken about mental health and her own mental health which tends to be up and down. She's cracked under pressure before but handled last year incredibly well when she won over 30+ matches in a row. She looked good in Australia as well until her last match. It was a pretty straightforward loss to Rybakina where she tried to avoid defeat instead of wanting to win:

“For sure the past two weeks have been pretty hard for me. So I felt today that I don’t have that much to take from myself to fight even more. I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to try to chill out a little bit more. I felt the pressure, and I felt that I don’t want to lose instead of I want to win. So that’s, I think, a base of what I should focus on in the next couple of weeks.”

She added:

“Usually when I come back from being down, I’m able to hold that momentum. Today I lost it. For sure she forced that as well, so congrats to her. I think it’s going to be motivating for me, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to play the next tournaments with something to focus on, something to work on, and I think I’m going to go forward. So I think it’s OK.”