Iga Swiatek has said she would like more opportunities to use the mental health tools provided by the WTA amid the growing concerns over social media abuse that tennis players receive.
On the court, Swiatek is in dominant mood as the Pole moved into the third round of the US Open with a 6-0 6-1 win over Ena Shibahara.
After a rusty opening round win, Swiatek detailed what adjustments she made heading into her second round clash with the Japanese qualifier, “It’s not like I need to do that much work because I kind of have the tools, but sometimes it’s just hard to use them,” Swiatek admitted in her press conference.
“I couldn’t really focus well on my first-round match, and I wanted to improve that. I gave myself time and acceptance that it may not be perfect, but step by step I can, yeah, as you said, have better focus and have better mindset.
“Usually I don’t feel well on court when I have too big expectations or because of that I make wrong decisions on court. So I just try to kind of reset and to remember that I don’t have to, like, play perfect tennis all the time, and it’s good if I make some mistakes, but I should just focus on improving, and that’s it.”
Swiatek will now face either Elisabetta Cocciaretto or Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova for a place in the second week.
The world number one isn’t just a phenomenal tennis player but a role model off the court as she has been a big advocate on mental health.
That stigma has once again been in the spotlight after Caroline Garcia’s social media post on abuse tennis players receive with the likes of Jessica Pegula and Katie Boulter commenting as well.
This are some of the messages I received lately after loosing some matches. Just a few of them. There’s hundreds. And now, being 30 years old, although they still hurt, because at the end of the day, I’m just a normal girl working really hard and trying my best, I have tools and… pic.twitter.com/q4djrfLfx9
— Caroline Garcia (@CaroGarcia) August 28, 2024
Most of the abuse comes from gamblers and has been a big problem throughout the last 5-6 years but has never been fully addressed.
Speaking on the situation Swiatek admitted she wasn’t aware of the gambling links but agrees that more needs to be done about the current situation, “Well, it happened a couple of times, but I got to say that I’m not, you know, going to my other inbox. I’m only kind of seeing the messages from my close ones, the ones that I already accepted. But for sure there is a lot of hate,” Swiatek explained.
“Mostly I’m trying to be in Internet and avoid that a little bit. How much gambling? I mean, I don’t know the statistics. I’ve never made research about it, but for sure people are really emotional when it comes to winning or losing money. It has probably a big impact, but I don’t know I can tell you like numbers.
“I think it’s kind of easy to check, but yeah, for sure it’s not easy for us players. It would be nice if we can kind of do more as Caro did, for example, and kind of try to educate people, and also maybe in the future have some solutions as, you know, using AI to make it safer for us.
“Because I feel like we can’t be on the internet and feel like kind of safe anymore. You have to really be careful on what you’re reading.”
The topic has been one that has not been properly dealt with but as Swiatek revealed there have been some tools that have been provided to players in the past.
However Swiatek said that these tools are not implemented often enough and the world number one would like to see more opportunities being given in order to help players out, “Well, what the tour is doing. I know that there are some tools that, for example, Roland Garros offered for us, like this app that we can have on the phone, and it’s going to block the hateful messages,” the Pole explained.
“And it’s also going to learn with you when you’re going to tag some messages as hateful or comments, you know. I’m always kind of saying that this is really nice, and my team also has been kind of looking in my case what kind of messages have been blocked or not when we’re using this app.
“It would be nice if we had more opportunities to use these kind of tools because it’s always some kind of a help.”
