Wimbledon 2025 Women’s Singles winner Iga Swiatek has revealed how devastated she felt after losing the No. 1 rank to Aryna Sabalenka, and that it took her time to come to terms with the loss. The Polish star suffered a fourth-round exit in the 2023 US Open, which resulted in her losing the top spot to the Belarusian.
Speaking on Andy Roddick’s Served podcast, Swiatek revealed that the loss affected her mental health for weeks before she could recover.
“I’ve got to say it was freeing in 2023 but not at first. When I lost the No.1 to Aryna for a couple of weeks, I was kind of devastated, but then it was freeing when I kind of worked through it, and when I turned it around to something positive,” she said.
After briefly losing the top spot, Swiatek reclaimed the No. 1 ranking at the end of the 2023 season, following which she served a one-month doping ban in 2024. Swiatek has also said that the ban left her in a different place mentally, and that this season wasn’t easy for her, though she tried to regain her focus.
“But this year and last year, it was a bit different, because I just had many different things to work on and to focus on. It started with my case and coming back after the case, and all these mixed feelings that I had,” she recalled.
Nonetheless, Swiatek believes she deserved the No. 1 spot and called it unfair to have lost it, adding that it left a negative impact on her career in the months that followed.
“Maybe it was not a lot of humility but I felt like I deserved to be No.1 and it was taken away from me. And having these kinds of feelings didn’t help me for the next month, because I just felt like the world is not fair,” she added.
Swiatek also expressed appreciation for still being ranked among the world’s best.
“I know it’s pretty childish and I’m in the top 10 so I shouldn’t be angry about things like that. I should be kind of grateful, but it took me a while to get over it and to focus on the future instead of the past,” she concluded.
The Polish tennis player is currently ranked No. 3 in the world.
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