World No.1 Iga Swiatek admitted after her third title in Rome on Saturday that she would be the favorite at Roland Garros (May 26-June 9), while recalling that winning a Grand Slam tournament was significantly more complicated. “I am world No. 1, in every tournament that I play, I am favorite, but the ranking does not make you win, we will see what happens,” declared the Pole at a press conference after her demonstration against the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka (6-2, 6-3).
“I have confidence in myself, I have the impression that I am playing well (…) but the Grand Slams are different tournaments, there is more pressure on and off the courts,” continued Swiatek who won three times on Parisian clay (2022, 2022, 2023). On Saturday, at the age of 22, she became the third player in history to win the two WTA 1000 clay court tournaments in Madrid, which appeared on the WTA calendar in 2009, and Rome in the same year.
The last to have achieved this double, the American Serena Williams in 2013, won Roland-Garros that year to secure the three most important tournaments of the year on clay.
“It’s clear that I love Paris, it’s a special place for me, I always enjoy the time I spend there. But you have to win seven difficult matches, I don’t take that lightly. I will have to work as hard as I did in Madrid and Rome,” she concluded.