Iga Świątek is one of tennis’ elite figures at the moment, currently sat at the apex of the women’s game.
She is a powerful and energetic player who dominates the court, yet off it boasts a mild-mannered and affable personality which is sometimes forgotten due to her bruising and often dominant performances.
Currently cruising through Indian Wells at the moment too, the Polish star will be hoping to solidify her spot at the top of the rankings.
However, likely well aware of the influence she now boasts due to that position, she is always seeking to use her platform for good.
What Iga Swiatek said about women’s tennis
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Tennis 365, seeking to promote the upcoming release of the video game TopSpin 2k25, the world number one was vocal about what she felt the WTA needed to be doing to boost the women’s game.
The 22-year-old’s vision was simple, and one she felt could be executed with minimal effort: ’I think a lot of people could be more supportive and fair to athletes generally because we’re humans, like everyone, we’re not machines and sometimes I feel like expectations are crazy.
‘Women’s sport is fascinating and we see so many inspiring stories among women. I would love to give them more recognition.
‘It’s also definitely something that governing bodies in tennis should approach in more decisive way – to tell these stories, to engage people, show how beautiful and entertaining our sport is. I hope that with a game like TopSpin 2K25 we can promote tennis, women’s tennis as well, a bit more.’
Break Point was a huge missed opportunity
Tennis is already a well-followed sport, but it remains quite a way off the gargantuan levels of football and many top American sports.
So, seeing Formula 1 make huge strides forward with their Netflix series Drive to Survive, it was expected that Break Point would result in a similar success story.
However, after just two seasons it has been cancelled, with poor reviews and underwhelming viewing figures to blame.
It feels like a huge missed opportunity to boost not just the sport in general but specifically women’s tennis, which as Swiatek stated boasts so many inspiring stories.
With Break Point, their inability to relay these narratives in a way that was engaging and captured the attention of the everyday viewer is what ultimately resulted in its termination. They will have hoped to usher in a brand-new era of tennis fans, but instead, they got it all wrong.
Whilst there are plenty of other avenues to be explored, the ease with which mainstream media can catapult some things into the stratosphere is what truly makes their failure to succeed with Netflix so frustrating.
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