“By Far The Favourite Now”: Rennae Stubbs Backs Iga Swiatek To Win Elusive Australian Open Title in 2024

On a recent episode of The Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast, the Australian picked Iga Swiatek as the favourite to win the 2024 Australian Open. Stubbs claims that the Polish star has learnt how to deal with pressure much better and hence, will come up with a much more impressive season in 2024. Swiatek will end the year as the World No.1 again like in 2022, but is yet to prove her mettle in some big tournaments.

Swiatek defended her French Open title in 2023 for the 4th Grand Slam trophy of her career. She also bagged a WTA 1000 title, the China Open, and won the WTA Finals as well. As a result, she was crowned the 2023 WTA Player of the Year.

However, her 2022 season might have been better since she added two Majors and four WTA 1000s to the cabinet. She embarked on a 37-match winning streak last year from the Qatar Open until her third-round Wimbledon loss that year. She collected six titles during that incredible run, including the French Open title.

Speaking on her podcast, Stubbs believes that Swiatek had put too much pressure on herself, which made her falter on certain occasions. This is perhaps due to the fact that she had raised the bar so high in 2022 that she was thinking constantly of bettering that in 2023. Additionally, Swiatek lost the No.1 ranking this year for a few months to Aryna Sabalenka. But Swiatek remains the favorite to win the Australian Open title in January, according to the former coach of Serena Williams.

“I think she (Swiatek) is by far the favourite now going into the Australian Open but I think what she did this year was a learning experience about how to handle the pressure.

“At the start of the year, I know that she was very aware of her winning streak from the year before. I know that she was putting a ton of pressure on herself to have that same year and was a little bit sort of overwhelmed by it in some respects. I think she learned a lot about herself this year and I think she’s going to be even better next year.”

Iga Swiatek has stumbled in the Australian Open

Rennae Stubbs, who is now a broadcaster and has also coached Karolina Pliskova in the past, might have made a bold prediction nevertheless. Iga Swiatek has made it past the fourth round only once in the first Slam of the year. Her semi-final finish in 2022 is her best result Down Under as the trophy eludes her.

In her debut season in 2019, Swiatek entered via the qualifiers and went out in the second round. In the following two editions (2020 and 2021), she made it to the fourth round. She came into the 2022 Australian Open seeded seventh. She breezed through the field to get to the semi-finals. Up against 27th seed Danielle Collins, she was the leading choice to make it to the final. The American, however, scored an upset win.

After the 2022 Australian Open, Swiatek was eliminated in the second round of the Dubai Tennis Championships. She bounced back with a bang for a 37-match winning streak. She finished the year as World No.1 and was a favourite for the 2023 AO, seeded first. However, she again met with a fourth-round exit, this time to 22 seed Elena Rybakina.

Come 2024, Swiatek will again be the #1 seed in the Australian Open. With the likes of Coco Gauff, Rybakina, defending champion Aryna Sabalenka, and the returning Naomi Osaka in the fray, it will not be easy to break her jinx. However, with the dominant tennis she displayed in 2023, Swiatek has the pedigree to win the elusive Slam.