A cold wind was blowing and it was raining in that apocalyptic autumn in Paris, the autumn of 2020, the autumn of the pandemic.
Winter is coming.
Parisians turned up the collars of their coats, huddled under umbrellas, hid their faces under masks. A handful of souls walked the halls of Roland Garros. The most spirited people gathered on the steps of the Philipe Chatrier. Those who did so watched the Iga Swiatek parade (22).
Swiatek was then unknown on the WTA circuit, only 54th in the world: no one had yet told us about that aggressive tennis Pole whose two-handed backhand, so exaggerated, made her wobble backwards.
Nobody had seen her coming.
And yet, in a flash, Swiatek was going to go through the rounds, giving up only three games in the fourth round to Simona Halep, then leader of the WTA, or overwhelming Sofia Kenin in the final, on the way to her first major.
Already then, the visionaries pointed out:
–A giant is coming.
And thus the promotion mechanisms were going to be activated, the will to design a story for it.
In the times of Ashleigh Barty and Naomi Osaka – the former, excessively discreet; the second, irregular – the godfathers of tennis rubbed their hands: Swiatek opened the doors to a new market. Well, Poland had shone for multiple sports, never for tennis.
While Swiatek was growing on the WTA circuit, launch campaigns continued on television and in magazines.
It was the cover of Forbes.
Time, in 2022, included her in the list of the 100 most influential women in the world.
(Not in vain, he often sports the Ukrainian flag on his cap or in a fold of his shirt).
And after winning her second crown in Paris (she did so in 2022; in total, she has accumulated four Grand Slam titles), Swiatek took flight on the women’s circuit, already the undisputed leader, especially after the premature professional retirement of Barty, tired of winning
And?
That the strategy does not work.
Swiatek has always been accompanied by her tennis, not her charisma: it will be a matter of her image, without distinctive features (neither tall nor short, neither muscular nor skinny, blonde ponytail like so many tennis players…). Or his desire to maintain a discreet profile: never a high-sounding statement, never a conflict with a judge or a rival, never outbursts or fuss…
The fact is that Swiatek (pronounced Sviontek) who will appear this Sunday in the Indian Wells final, where Maria Sakkari is waiting, has accumulated 96 weeks as world number 1, she is the tenth of all time, she is the tennis player who will mark the current era, but his story is limited to tennis, it will never allow him to emulate the legend of Billie Jean King, nor revive the Evert-Navratilova rivalry, nor generate the charisma of Graf, nor recreate the tragedy of Seles (stabbed in Hamburg), nor build the Williams’ groundbreaking narrative.
Swiatek is just a superlative tennis player.
Although that’s what it’s about, right?
