Iga Swiatek’s decision not to play the Ningbo Open means the Pole will officially not qualify for the WTA Finals at the end of the season.

The star had an outside shot of qualifying and she was locked in a battle with Karolina Muchova and Marta Kostyuk for the last remaining slot.

However, the leg injury Swiatek suffered in the Wuhan Open semifinal was enough to keep her out of the Ningbo Open and she will now miss the WTA Finals for the first time since 2019.

However, Andy Roddick does not think Swiatek missing the WTA Finals is a major issue and she should absolutely be prioritising her health over the year-end tournament.

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“She has as many slams [Stefan] Edberg, [Boris] Becker, [Maria] Sharapova, Kim [Clijsters], like she is already great and will forever live as an all-time great,” said Roddick on Served.

“If there’s a leg injury and there is enough mental stress to cry your way through a loss in Wuhan I don’t know that I give a s— about making the world tour finals if I’m Iga and if I’m on her team. I don’t know that I can deal in being shortsighted.

“Like at a certain point in our careers, our strengths, which for Iga is like she goes and takes her lunch pail in her hard hat to work every single day and she cares so much every single day more than I mean she is so like kind of micro focused on every single day.

“It’s served her well up until this point and at some point there has to be a breath. If you go and play on a leg that wasn’t feeling well two days earlier in the kind of say the dead times of the year, but if you’re a six-time slam winner, [it’s] the most unimportant parts of the year.

“If you’re a six-time slam winner, you deal in wins and losses and slams and number one rankings. Your focus and your priority is not am I [ranked] 10, am I [ranked] eight, it’s getting ready so that you can ramp up and try to win a slam next year.”

Swiatek has not claimed a Grand Slam title since winning Wimbledon back in 2025. This year was the first season since 2019 that the Pole was unable to claim a major title.

However, there is plenty of reasons to be positive for Swiatek heading into the 2027 season.

She has shown signs of promise under new coach Francisco Roig, which included a victory at the Canadian Open during the North American hardcourt swing.

If Swiatek’s injury is not too serious and she can return to the practice courts fairly soon, she could be about to gain a huge advantage on her WTA rivals.

The star has not had an extended period of time to work with Roig on the practice courts yet, so this could be the period where everything clicks for the Pole.

If that happens, she will be one of the favourites to claim the Australian Open title at the beginning of the 2027 season.