Iga Swiatek is a professional Polish tennis player. She was born into a sports family on May 31, 2001 in Warsaw, Poland. Her father is a former Olympic oarsman who represented Poland and competed in the men’s quadruple sculls event at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Iga began playing tennis at the age of 5 and was a very successful junior, reaching a career-high rank at no. 5 in the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors ranking. In 2016, she helped the Polish team win a second Junior Fed Cup title. That same year, she won her first professional ITF tournament that was held in Stockholm. In 2018, at the age of 17, Iga won the Wimbledon girls’ singles title, French Open girls’ doubles title, and doubles gold at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires. She took the next step and started to become a regular player on the ITF Women’s Circuit. Then, in 2019, being the seven-time winner on the ITF World Tennis Tour, she made a full-time transition to the WTA Tour, qualifying for her first WTA main draw at the Australian Open and making her breakthrough in Lugano, reaching her first WTA final. That year, Iga also reached the third round of the Rogers Cup in Toronto and the fourth round in the French Open.

 

The next season, during the Australian Open, Iga matched her best result at a Grand Slam tournament. In 2020, due to the pandemic outbreak, many tournaments were canceled. After the exhibition tournaments in Montreux and Prague, in August she reached the third round at the US Open. Iga’s greatest success came in October 2020, when at the age of 19, she became the French Open champion. Her victory at Roland Garros was the first for any Polish tennis player in a Grand Slam tournament. Iga already won 12 tournaments in total on the WTA tour, including two other Grand Slam titles, in Paris in 2022 and at the US Open 2022. In April 2022 she became no 1 player in the world. In private, Iga is a cat lover who enjoys reading novels by Ken Follett and listening to music. Before the matches, she listens to rock music, especially the work of legendary bands such as Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and AC/DC. In her spare time, she listens to alternative music, jazz, soul and pop. The quote that inspires her is “You did not wake up to be ordinary”.