"She was a little girl who wanted to learn to play as quickly as possible. And when she learned, what mattered most to her was winning," recalls Artur Szostaczko, her first coach.

"She was a fighter... I knew that if it went to the tie-break, there was nothing to worry about - she was not going to crack," the 51-year-old told AFP. year.

Mr Szostaczko still coaches on the same clay court where the soon-to-be Polish star held his first racquet and tried his hand at hitting a ball against a concrete wall, while his older sister practiced nearby.

"Left, right, she kept running to catch the ball, it amused her," he says in front of this wall covered in multicolored graffiti at the Warszawianka tennis club.

A player trains, on March 31, 2022, on the court of the Warszawianka tennis club on the wall covered in multicolored graffiti, where Iga Swiatek hatched Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP / Archives

"Usually a child struggles to hit even one or two balls in a row, when she was able to take dozens of shots," adds the coach who, like Swiatek, wears always a cap on the head.

Mr Szostaczko followed the two talented sisters - whose father Tomasz competed in the rowing competition at the 1988 Seoul Olympics - for five years, until Iga was 10.

A decade later, Iga Swiatek is at the top of women's tennis, with the title at Roland Garros 2020 and an unbroken series of 34 victories on the circuit.

If she manages to beat Coco Gauff in the final on Saturday, the young Pole will equal the record held by Venus Williams for the longest winning streak among women since 2000.

Artur Szostaczko is proud of his former student.

He always keeps in mind the image of this fun child, always with pigtails, always on the move, with phenomenal coordination and the eternal smile on her face.

The former coach of Iga Swiatek Artur Szostaczko at the Warszawianka club tennis club, May 31, 2022 Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP / Archives

"I taught her to play aggressively because that's the future of tennis. Today she's doing it in a great way," he said.

The Swiatek sisters

The Swiatek sisters then moved on to Michal Kaznowski, then a coach at the Mera tennis club, also in the Polish capital.

He remembers that Iga always wanted to be treated on an equal footing with her big sister.

"Iga got really mad at me once when I suggested a drill and gave Agata eight balls to play and only six to her," the 35-year-old told AFP.

"She went to see her father to tell him that she wanted to have as many (balls) as Agata," he smiles, while qualifying their rivalry as "healthy".

According to him, Agata was equally talented and even had the advantage of being taller, but her injuries snuffed out the chances of what could have been Poland's answer to the Williams sisters.

The young Swiatek continued to train under Michal Kaznowski until she was 15 years old.

Michał Kaznowski, the former coach of Iga Swiatek, on May 31, 2022 trains young people at the Mera tennis club where Iga Swiatek trained Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP/Archives

They were inspired by the famous sentence of Serena Williams when she was 11 years old, who, when asked who she wanted to be like, replied: "I wish other people were like me".

"We followed that idea...to develop his own style, his own personality," says Kaznowski.

They looked to men's tennis for role models, avoiding looking for any among female players for fear that Iga might one day find himself up against one.

"We wanted her to be able to play against the best players, without apprehending," he explains.

"As we can see, it worked. She's there, on top, and now everyone wants to be like Iga."

© 2022 AFP