Iga Swiatek suffered a shock loss to Anna Kalinskaya last week at the Dubai Championships. Kalinskaya did go on to win the tournament, but Swiatek is clearly the most consistently good player in women’s tennis. Any time she loses before she reaches the semifinals of an event is a bit of a surprise. This is especially true when she loses to a non-seeded player such as Kalinskaya.
Any top athlete also has to have a lot of confidence in themselves, of course. No top player is going to have the mindset that a player has beaten them simply because that player is naturally better than they are. The best players have to think when they lose that part of the loss was because they did not do as well as they have come to expect and can do better in the future. This is part of having a winning mentality.
Does that sometimes come across as arrogant? Sure, whether the attitude is meant to be or not. One cannot succeed without having some belief in themselves and trying to express that belief can be off-putting at times.
Reaction to Iga Swiatek’s comment after losing to Anna Kalinskaya are nonsensical
But there is normally no greater meaning when a player blames themselves for an unexpected loss. There is not necessarily any insight into their long-term feeling about a larger subject. They lost and they feel like most of the blame was on them.
But because Iga Swiatek seems to get more hate on toxic social media – which she has rightfully complained about – than many other players when she says something some people do not like, the reaction spreads. But the pushback she has gotten on social media from her post-match comments after her loss to Kalinskaya is just, well…ridiculous.
Part of what Swiatek said was, “Today I would say, I mean (Kalinskaya) played well and for sure she deserves to be in the final, but I feel like it was more about me and my level. I wanted to be focused on myself and I wasn’t really able to implement any tactics that I had.”
Seems fairly benign, right? Instead, trolls on social media took issue.
Kalinskaya is not better than Swiatek and the history of both players backs that up. Swiatek has been ranked number one for almost two years. Kalinskaya’s highest ranking is 38. Again, though, this isn’t about Kalinskaya overall, but Swiatek simply making some comments about how on the day Kalinskaya beat her the Pole did not play as well as she expected.
