Iga Świątek is not back, because the tennis she wants to play has never left her. Can she find it?

To follow The Athletics live coverage of day 8 of the French Open.

PARIS – It had been a good week to be Iga Świątek.

The four-time French Open champion was back on her beloved red clay. The sun was shining. The scorching heat at Roland Garros had made the topspin on her forehand even more powerful than normal.

Fate was also on her side, in cahoots with the weather. She had avoided a bear trap in a third-round match against her personal Achilles heel, Jelena Ostapenko, after the Latvian lost to Świątek’s compatriot Magda Linette.

Later that same day, the draw opened further when No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina was upset by Yulia Starodubtseva in the second round, meaning that the highest seed in Rybakina’s quarter of the draw – Świątek’s hypothetical opponent in the semifinals – is No. 8 Mirra Andreeva.

Most importantly, Świątek felt lost in the tennis wilderness for a while earlier this year and felt clear and balanced enough to take advantage of what was in front of her. She had advanced to the fourth round of her first Grand Slam tournament with her new coach of two months, Francisco Roig. There she would face No. 15 seed Marta Kostyuk, against whom she has a 3-0 record.

“I feel like the decision-making has been better, and that is an improvement,” Świątek said on Friday. “I mean, after how I played in the States, honestly, anything that’s better is a positive.”

And then a new week began. On Court Philippe-Chatrier, Świątek fell to a 7-5, 6-1 defeat that encompassed both her more recent tennis problems and a broader problem in her game that she and Roig will have to try to solve.

In the opening set, Świątek had Kostyuk where she wanted her. Twice she led through a break, including when she was up 5-4 and serving for the set, and twice she was put back, mainly due to her own mistakes.

In the second, Świątek broke in the first game and pushed the Ukrainian across the court, as she has done with so many opponents on clay. But from that point on, the spin cycle that had led her to appoint Roig and fire her previous coach, Wim Fissette, took over. Her serve did not earn her any free points. Her basic game took all the pressure in every match. It inevitably started to crack, and a flurry of unforced errors, coupled with Kostyuk seizing her moment, turned into an irreparable slide.

It was in March, during two WTA 1000 tournaments, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California and the Miami Open, that Świątek had a short, impressive run that led her to decide she had had enough.

She lost second place in the world rankings to Rybakina after exiting Indian Wells in the quarterfinals. She then suffered a shocking second-round loss to fellow countrywoman Linette in Florida after receiving a bye in the first round.

Then world number 50 Linette broke Świątek’s streak of 73 wins in the opening match, which dates back to 2021.

It proved a turning point for Świątek, who said tennis felt “complicated” in her mind afterward, a flashing red warning sign for a player whose best wins had always featured a fluid balance between attack and defense. Instead of adjusting during matches, she froze and skipped more often than not.

Swiatek seemed to be caught between two styles. There was the direct, simple first-strike tennis preached by Tomasz Wiktorowski, with whom Świątek won four of her Grand Slam titles. And there was the more patient, varied style she first played when she burst onto the scene in 2020 by winning this tournament, and which she had begun to reintroduce with the support of Fisette, who replaced Wiktorowski towards the end of the 2024 season.

Świątek reached the semifinals of the 2025 Australian Open and won Wimbledon that summer, but her successes have always been accompanied by similar losses. Her serve did not earn her any free points, so she had to rally through almost every point. The pressure would increase on her basic game, mistakes would inevitably occur and the cycle would land Świątek in lopsided scorelines in deciding sets. The same cycle that arrived at Court Philippe-Chatrier late Sunday morning.

Świątek fired Fisette three days after the loss to Linette in March. She said her goal in the next chapter was to become a “wall on the court.”

She turned to the major manufacturer of sturdy tennis shoes: Spain.

Świątek spent a few healing days in Mallorca, where she trained at the academy of her idol Rafael Nadal. Nadal attended two of her practices and she hired one of his former coaches, Roig, who she said integrated well into her team with his distinct sense of humor. He took her to play golf at the Madrid Open, and tore his Achilles tendon in a volleyball match with her during a public practice at the Italian Open in Rome. He invited her entire team to the red carpet premiere of the new Netflix docuseries about Nadal, but realized he had the wrong month – after everyone got all dressed up to go out.

“He is a really positive person. He can talk to anyone and he is very relaxed, but he can easily switch to a person who is decisive in the team and also a person who has to tell me what to do,” Świątek said on Friday. “So it’s a nice mix. There’s a very good balance in it, I think.”

Their shared goal isn’t that different from what Świątek and Fisette were trying to achieve. Świątek must evolve as the rest of women’s tennis catches up to the powerful style that once allowed her to dominate.

But Roig’s method has made a difference. They trained differently than she did with Fisette; longer rallies became the norm in practice and Świątek’s confidence in her decision-making has been restored.

“You have to have the feeling in your head that you are not going to miss a ball,” Swiatek said in April at the Madrid Open. “I honestly have the feeling that this Spanish form of coaching really helps with that. … After these training sessions in Mallorca, I have not been able to make any hasty decisions.”

Iga Świątek’s coach, Francisco Roig (in blue) previously worked with Rafael, Nadal, her tennis idol.

Roig also adjusted her footwork, instructing her to stay higher in her stance and emphasizing the importance of staying upright and not leaning too far forward or back.

Świątek said she has felt unstable in her base in recent months, another warning sign for a player who has arguably the best footwork in the game.

“I felt like I wanted to be more ready and slower, but that made me quite heavy on the ground, so you have to find a balance,” Świątek said. “Tennis is about fluidity and fluidity, adapting to different types of situations. If you’re just stuck with your legs and trying to stay low, you’re not going to react as quickly.”

Swiatek is adapting better now – or at least she no longer finds the adjustment puzzle as difficult as it was a few months ago.

At the French Open, her second-round match against world number 35 Sara Bejlek was a straight-set victory that Świątek dictated from the first ball to the last, but it was hardly clean. She made 38 unforced errors and had difficulty closing points assertively. She felt like she had too many options to attack Bejlek, making it difficult to know when to stay back and wait or go for the crushing blow.

When Świątek described that challenge at her press conference, the change in her since March became clear. Then she felt pain. Now she is lighthearted.

“I didn’t mind that,” Świątek said of how unpredictable she found Bejlek’s style. “I wanted to be flexible and adapt and play my game. Sometimes I had moments where the mistakes happened, but at the end I felt like I was the one in control of the game, and it was up to me whether I finish these points or make a mistake. In important moments I was focused and patient enough to play solidly.”

Her third-round win on Friday set a nice benchmark for her tennis since the coaching change. She played Linette again and this time defeated her 6-4, 6-4. As in her match against Bejlek, she wasn’t perfect – her shot selection wasn’t flawless, her intensity wavered in the second set – but that didn’t matter. Świątek was in charge. And when she missed, it wasn’t because of two warring voices in her head.

“It was difficult this year to play with my intuition on the hard court season. I feel like we focused on that a lot in the beginning with Francisco,” she said.

“Also for me not to get rash in decisions because I don’t know, I feel like I’m going to miss or something. So I feel a lot more solid and that gives me the confidence that I can get the next ball back and the next ball back, you know, that I don’t have to finish the rally straight away.”

There were promising signs during her first good week in Paris. That the second only lasted one day shows how much more there is to do.