Iga Swiatek "Rafael Nadal is Out of my League!" - RG 2023

Igo Svantek is through to her third Roland Garros final. A straight set victory over the Brazilian Harad Maia gives her the opportunity to fight for a third Roland Garros title on Saturday. Quite impressive for a 22 year old. Here's what Svantek had to say after the match. Hi Igo, congratulations. Igo, obviously your third final in four years. I know you love this tournament, I know you love the clay, we know your abilities here, but I'm curious for you, growing up watching Rafa win all those titles here, given how comfortable you are here, did you ever tell yourself or imagine or do you motivate yourself by saying I too want to have like an Iga dynasty here, you know? Do you want to keep coming here every year and doing this? Well I wouldn't say that kind of motivation, it's my style, you know? I'm more of a person who just try to do her best every day and hope for the best, but no, like Rafa, what he did and what he's still doing, you know, it's pretty amazing and I never kind of knew that it's going to be possible for me, so it was totally out of my reach, if I can say that. And you know, still, he played so well so many years, I don't know if it's going to be possible for me, but I just try to keep it, you know, keep it cool year by year and just do everything step by step, so I wasn't really thinking that. Hi, congratulations. Thank you. I think in Doha, you said that after Australia opened this year, you tried to figure out what went wrong in Australia's season, and I think you said that you put too much pressure on yourself, you expect yourself to win like every matches, so you tried to change that kind of a mindset, and then now you made this huge, you know, of course not dominating, but you didn't lose the set, so any differences in terms of like a mindset or preparation of the mentality? I wouldn't say in Australia I was in a good place, so since then I made a progress and I switched my mindset to kind of be more efficient and calm and not overanalyze everything, you know, and not overanalyze my situation, so I would say I'm just in a different place, so it's pretty hard for me to compare, and I'm pretty happy that I don't have to like deal with so much stuff that I dealt with in Australia, and obviously it's still, you know, a lot of pressure, and it's not easy, but also on clay I feel like I have, you know, more weapons than on faster hardcourt, and I'm trying to use that confidence and that feeling of being, you know, comfortable on that surface to just kind of focus on that a little bit more and play better because of that. I'm just pretty happy to be in the final again, it was a tough match, and especially second set, like every point counted, and it was stressful in some moments, so I'm happy that I was really solid and I was able to close it in the tiebreaker, it wasn't easy and Beatrice really played well, so I'm just happy. You showed some rare signs of frustrations on court today, what was your frustration about? Something specific or was just the general, you know, turn that the match was taking after the set, where you showed some signs of frustration on court? What kind of, can you describe? Sort of yelling and looking, you know, like, I don't know. Is it different than most of the matches? I thought it was, yeah. Okay, for me it was pretty much the same, obviously like it's not easy to play such a tight match, so I can't really comment because I felt, you know, the same as usual. I actually felt kind of more focused because I know that the crowd was loud and I tried to just kind of keep my focus, you know, inside. Yeah, congrats. It was the first time you played against her, she beat you the first time, so it was a tough match today. What makes her difficult to play for you? Well, for sure, you know, she's really using the fact that she's a lefty and she's really using her spin on the serve and it's just tactically, you know, a little bit different, you always have to kind of adjust and switch most of the things that you do on court because she's a lefty. But I don't know, like, I just knew that I can really use my power on clay and even make it physical if I need to. So I had a lot of confidence in myself today, so that's all. You haven't played Karolina, I think, since 2019. Have you watched her much since then? And what is it like to play a player like that versus players like Arina and Rybakina, who you've been playing a lot lately on these big stages? I still feel like I know Karolina's game anyway, because I played many practices with her since 2019. And I also watch her actually more than most of the players, just a coincidence, but it happened, you know. And I really like her game, honestly. I really respect her and she's, I feel like, a player who can do anything, you know. She has great touch. She can also speed up the game. She plays with that kind of, I don't know, freedom in her movements. And she has a great technique. So I watched her matches and I feel like I know her game pretty well. But obviously on matches it's a little bit different and I'll be ready no matter what. Good evening. I was curious about how you managed your time before your own semi-final, because the previous match was very long. Was a big upset, had an incredible scenario at the end. Do you authorize yourself to look at it, enjoy it? Or do you have to separate completely your own focus compared to what was happening on the court? Well, I think just imagining how they felt in terms of, you know, all these ups and downs they had in that match. And it wasn't, I would say, enjoyable. It was more like I could kind of feel what they were feeling, so I tried to just be focused on myself. But obviously I had to look at the score to know where to warm up. And yeah, well, it's always more smooth and more comfortable when the match before you is going quicker and kind of one way, so you know what's going to happen. But they are both fighters, so they fought till the end. And that's why the score was sometimes one way and then it was even. So I wasn't watching to see much. I was just watching to know the score.