Todd Woodbridge says he is hoping Iga Swiatek worked on her slice backhand in the offseason as the former doubles world No. 1 believes it is the key to the world No. 2 achieving success at the Australian Open.
Although the Pole has already won five Grand Slams by the age of 23, she hasn’t had that much success at Melbourne Park so far in her career.
Apart from a semifinal outing in 2022, it has mostly been early exits for Swiatek at the Australian Open – three times lost in the round-of-16 and also had second and third-round defeats.
But recently, the 23-year-old made a big change and replaced Tomasz Wiktorowski with Naomi Osaka’s former long-time coach Wim Fissette.
Shortly after their partnership was revealed, the Belgian coach – under whose guidance Osaka won the Australian Open and US Open – underlined one of his primary goals would be making the Pole a better player on faster surfaces.
Woodbridge: Hopefully Swiatek and Fissette have been working on her backhand slice
“There’s a new coaching team [now including Wim Fissette], and hopefully in the off-season they’ve been running over to the backhand corner and hitting some slice backhands – a defensive shot to get back into play,” the Australian tennis legend said The AO Show Weekly.
“[It’s] one shot…