Tennis News: Iga Swiatek and Emma Raducanu

Iga Swiatek is obviously one of the best players on the WTA tour. She has been ranked No. 1 for most of two years and only shortly lost the top spot to Aryna Sabalenka in 2023. Swiatek regained No. 1 in ruthless fashion at the WTA Finals near the end of the year as she dominated every match on her way to winning the title. But still, she is not a perfect player.

One aspect of her game that needs to improve is her serve. She has issues with her ball toss quite a bit and her second serve is a weakness. Even her first serve is extremely inconsistent. If she can fix these problems, there may be no beating her.

Former top-ten player Andrea Petkovic spoke about this on a recent episode of the Tennis Channel's Inside-In podcast. Petkovic correctly pointed out that what has turned Jannik Sinner from a good player to possibly the best player on the ATP tour currently is that Sinner was not afraid to tinker with his serve. Swiatek might need to copy Sinner some.

Iga Swiatek needs a serve change and Emma Raducanu is not partying

Petkovic said, "The one thing that (Swiatek) doesn’t have compared to Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina is that big serve that can get her a lot of free points. An example on the ATP Tour, Jannik Sinner did the same thing. It cost him the French Open – he lost in the first or second round in five sets – and everyone was like ‘Oh what is happening to Jannik’ but they were tinkering with his serve...Then they went back to that and all of a sudden it clicked together and now he seems to be unbeatable."

Speaking of podcasts, Andy Roddick has an excellent one called Served with Andy Roddick. On a recent episode, Roddick took issue with an ignorant British tabloid headline about Emma Raducanu. The headline implied that instead of focusing on her game, Raducanu was too busy "partying" ahead of a recent tournament and this affected her play.

Roddick, however, pointed out that Raducanu was granted a wildcard into the Qatar Open and many times a well-known wildcard will do the tournament a favor by showing up at events that help sell the tournament. In Raducanu's case, she appeared at an opening for a new hotel in Dubai that had a tie-in with the tennis event. Instead of researching actual facts, the tabloid simply assumed Raducanu was drinking the night away.

Roddick said on his podcast, "They’re like, she’s out partying. I’m like, no. She went to an appearance that was probably the reason why she...Maybe I’m projecting here but it’s not out of bounds. She went to this thing, took a picture sitting down, no drink in the hand, no nothing. Party? The headline’s impossible!"

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