Swiatek back in Pole position

For weeks, while back home in Warsaw last year, Iga Swiatek hung out with friends and made new ones, but didn't dare tell them about the doping case that was hanging over her.

"Obviously, in the back of my mind," she said Saturday evening at the All England Club, "I had this thing."

There was more going on, too, and she only opened up to her family and her team.

A coaching change. A title drought. A ranking drop. Her grandfather's passing.

"It all (happened) together," Swiatek said. "It wasn't easy."

And so, in some ways, the Wimbledon championship Swiatek claimed Saturday with a 6-0, 6-0 victory — yes, read that score again — in 57 minutes over Amanda Anisimova could be viewed as more than merely a significant on-court result.

It mattered, of course, that she finally conquered grass courts, in general, and on the manicured lawns of Wimbledon in particular.

That the 24-year-old from Poland became the youngest woman with at least one major trophy on all three surfaces since 2002, when Serena Williams did it at age 20. That Swiatek now needs only an Australian Open title to complete a career Grand Slam.

In the bigger picture, though, this triumph followed what has been a difficult 12-plus months and provided, in Swiatek's own words, the following takeaway: "The lesson is just that, even when you feel like you're not on a good path, you can always get back to it if you put in enough effort and you have good people around you."

There was a stretch not so long ago when she was considered far-and-away the best player in women's tennis.

"She's an unbelievable player," Anisimova said.

Swiatek held the No 1 ranking for most of the past three seasons.

She put together a 37-match winning streak in 2022 that included six tournament titles until it ended at — you've guessed it — Wimbledon.

She won five Grand Slam titles, four on the red clay at the French Open and one on the hard courts at the US Open, and established herself as a bona fide star.

Except there was always the matter of what went on when she played on grass.

Zero titles. Zero finals.

One quarterfinal run at the All England Club was the best she could muster as a pro, having won Junior Wimbledon as a teen.

The questions kept arising, from herself and from others.

Then those doubts spread to other events and other surfaces.

She left the 2024 Olympics, held at Roland Garros, with a bronze medal after losing in the semifinals. She departed Wimbledon last year in the third round, the US Open in the quarterfinals.

Last month, she exited the French Open in the semifinals, ending her bid for a fourth consecutive championship there.

In all, Swiatek went more than a year without reaching a singles final anywhere.

Swiatek's doping ban weighed heavily on her.

She accepted the ban after failing an out-of-competition drug test. The International Tennis Integrity Agency accepted her explanation that the result was unintentional and caused by the contamination of a non-prescription medication she was taking for issues with jet lag and sleeping.

"The second half of last year was extremely challenging for me, especially due to the positive doping test and how circumstances completely beyond my control took away my chance to fight for the highest sporting goals at the end of the season," Swiatek wrote in a social media post in March, adding that the episode "forced me to rearrange certain things within myself".

Eventually, Swiatek was able to do that on Saturday.

"I came back to being my old kind of self," she said, although she is still "scared about eating something that might be contaminated".

On June 12, a month to the day before facing Anisimova — Swiatek checked her phone's calendar to be sure — and a week after her 26-match French Open winning streak came to a close, it was time to get to work.

Swiatek headed to the Spanish island of Mallorca to practice on grass.

Next was a trip to Germany for more training, before entering a tournament there.

She made it all the way to that final, before eventually losing and tearing up during the post-match ceremony.

A mere two weeks later, at Wimbledon, Swiatek was all smiles, and, as she left her last interview of the day, she joked: "That was a good therapy session."

Agencies via Xinhua