Karolina Pliskova says Iga Swiatek is a much tougher opponent to face than Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova as the Pole “gives you nothing” as the Czech also opened up about the fear factor that used to exist in the locker room.
Pliskova competed when Williams and Sharapova were at their peaks and she even topped the rankings in 2015 when the pair dominated the sport. Nine years later, the 32-year-old remains active on the WTA Tour and has also come up against current world No 1 Swiatek.
The Czech had a 2-2 head-to-head record against Williams, was 0-2 against Sharapova and 0-2 against Swiatek.
Having faced all three of them, the former world No 1 is in an excellent position to explain why Swiatek is such a difficult rival.
“To play against Iga Swiatek is much harder because she doesn’t give you anything. With Serena, in the end her game was much more aggressive or like Sharapova who I played. But they would at least give you light points or make some mistakes,” she said on the No Challenges podcast.
“I feel like Iga Swiatek is not so aggressive but she really gives you nothing and she doesn’t even have one dip where she would have like one bad game, at least in the matches where I played her.
“Especially on clay, she moves so well. I felt like with Serena, if you can get her on the move you could have some light points.
“I’m sure Serena at her best she would beat Swiatek on hard courts for sure, but it’s a different game, the personality is very different from both of them.”
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One of the reasons that Swiatek is more difficult to beat might be the fact that the overall level of the WTA Tour has improved in recent years.
Pliskova believes most players were afraid of stars like Williams-Sharapova back in the day and the locker room was dominated by fear, but things are different these days.
“Before you had bigger stars with bigger personalities and you wouldn’t even say ‘hi’ to them like Serena or Maria… of course there were some like Caroline Wozniacki, she nice girl so she would always speak with others, but then you had a couple they would just completely ignore you,” she explained.
“That was the mood in the locker rooms. For example, you wouldn’t even see Sharapova as she never entered the locker room so there was this fear. I never feared them on court, but you were always wondering ‘is she here, is she not going to play’.
“The stars were trying to be separate, but now I feel everybody is kind of at the same level, everybody is trying to be friendly. I think it is overall more friendly now than it was before, not too many enemies, but of course you always find somebody who hates somebody, but not too obvious.
“But on the other hand, I feel the [current] level is incredibly high from players who maybe 150-200, if they have a good day and the top player has a bad day then it could be an even match. Before I didn’t think that was the case.
“Before I had so many matches where I played completely s*** and I won whereas now if I play s*** there is no chance to win.”
