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Iga Swiatek was left in tears in the middle of her Wuhan Open semi-final on Saturday as she struggled with an injury. The No. 7 seed led 5-3 in the opening set and served for it, but went on to lose 10 of the last 11 games as she suffered a 7-5 6-1 defeat to countrywoman Maja Chwalinska. Swiatek was clearly struggling and received a medical timeout towards the end of the first set. At the beginning of set two, she was seen crying as she spoke to her team another whether or not she should retire from the match.
In the end, the six-time Major champion Swiatek decided to play on, though she won just one more game and wore heavy strapping on her thigh. Some fans questioned why the Pole didn’t call it quits, speculating whether her coaches were the ones telling her to play on.
Swiatek’s physio, Maciej Ryszczuk, has now hit back at suggestions that he wanted the seventh seed to continue. “I told her three times to stop the match because it's bad for her health. She made the decision herself to continue playing, and since she made that one, I support her as much as I can,” he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter).
The 25-year-old might have been extra keen to push through in a bid to qualify for the WTA Finals. There is now just one spot left in the season-ending championships, with seven players sealing their qualification.
Swiatek still sits a few hundred points behind Karolina Muchova in the race. Marta Kostyuk could also overtake both of them to clinch that final spot in Indian Wells, this year’s host of the WTA Finals.
Given Swiatek’s physical woes in Wuhan, the world No. 9 could opt to end her season altogether and stop pushing for the final place. She is currently set to compete in the upcoming Ningbo Open, where she has a bye directly into the second round.
The former world No. 1 later confirmed that she had been carrying a quad injury throughout the tournament – but didn’t want to retire, to allow Chwalinska to have her moment. “From the beginning of the tournament, I kind of felt pain in my quad,” she said.
“I've been able to manage that day by day and we were already thinking of withdrawing after I played with Magda [Frech] in the first round but I was quite able to play normal, so I wanted to push, and we knew that it's nothing like that it's gonna get worse or something, so in that case, you just need to block it out.
“But today was just too much, and that's unfortunate because I felt like we're playing great tennis and wanted to continue. Later on, I knew it's going to be tough to win, but I didn't want to honestly retire because I wanted Maja to win it normally.”
Meanwhile, fellow Polish star Maja Chwalinska will face British ace Sonay Kartal in the Wuhan Open final after beating Swiatek. The No. 16 seed reached the French Open final as a qualifier in the spring and is now seeking a maiden WTA Tour title.
“I really hope she's going to be okay soon and hope she will qualify (for the WTA Finals),” Chwalinska said of Swiatek.
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