"After 3 years of the greatest achievements in my career, together with my coach Tomasz Wiktorowski we decided to part way," Swiatek wrote. "I want to start with a big thank you and appreciating our work together."
Swiatek hired Wiktorowski, the long-time coach of former World No.2 at the end of the 2021 season. Under Wiktorowski's tutelage, Swiatek went on to capture four of her five Grand Slams, ascend to World No.1, and engineer the longest win streak of the 2000s, reeling off 37 consecutive wins in 2022. Together, they captured 19 of her 22 career titles and an Olympic silver medal this past summer.
Last year, Wiktorowski was voted the WTA's Coach of the Year by his peers.
"Coach Wiktorowski joined my team for three seasons, when I strongly needed changes and a fresh approach to my game," Swiatek wrote. "His experience, analytical and strategic attitude and enormous knowledge about tennis helped us to achieve things I've never dreamed of only a few months after we started working together.
"Our main goal was to become No.1 player in the world and coach Wiktorowski was the one who said it first. We aimed very high, we headed to every tournament with a clear goal to win it. Together with coach Wiktorowski we won many tournaments and 4 Grand Slams."
Swiatek withdrew from this week's China Open, where was a defending champion, and next week's Dongfeng Voyah Wuhan Open. This year, she has won four WTA 1000 titles this year at Doha, Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome, as well as her fifth major title at Roland Garros. She has qualified for her fourth consecutive WTA Finals in Riyadh, which will be played in November.
She confirmed in her post that she is in the midst of the process of hiring a new coach.
"Due to this important change on my team, I give myself a couple of weeks to start a cooperation with a new coach," she wrote. "I'm in the middle of first talks with coaches from abroad (non-Polish) because I'm ready to take the next step of my career. I will let you know when I make a decision."
According to Swiatek's post, the decision to end her work with Wiktorowski was mutual and amicable.
"Coach, THANK YOU, I wish you all the best," Swiatek wrote. "I know that you would like to rest after these 3 years of hard work and traveling a lot and spending some well deserved time with your loved ones and I hope you'll get what you need."
This was quite surprise to fans and tennis personalities alike. I think for many the most surprising is the timing.
On the one hand it would seem to make more sense to stay with the same coach till the end of the year and start fresh in 2025.
On the other hand on the constant hamster wheel that is the tennis tour there is no good time for something like this.
End of the season does give her more time to find someone and see how they gel in the off season before working on tour together. The spit certainly seemed mutual.
As she states seems like her coach has had enough of the tour life and Iga herself is searching for some new energy and a new voice.
Being very ambitious she's always working on improving her game and I guess on some level she felt like with Thomas she has gone as far as she could.
Seems like Iga realized that if she wants to do better at places like Wimbledon or Australia she has to be willing to make some big changes.
He helped her fulfill everything he promised chief among them being world #1 and then some. What they have done together is nothing short of extraordinary 19 titles in all (4 of them Slams).
Wiktorowski really helped to unlock Iga's potential so as a fan I'll always be grateful for that. Having Iga at the top of the sport has made it better.
She'll now be working with a non-Polish coach (something she mentioned she might be ready for in 2 or 3 years). So in that sense she's definitely sticking to that timeline. Which will be fascinating.
There's a lot of online speculation about who that person might be. Top 2 at the moment seem to be former coach of Osaka and Kerber, Whim Fisette. As well as Justine Henin's coach Carlos Rodriguez.
All very intriguing choices. I guess the question will be how receptive the rest of the Iga team will be to allowing someone new to take the lead and bring in some changes.
It's understandable that Iga has chosen to withdraw from some tournaments to deal with it all (also mentioned being tired having played so many tournaments again this year).
Selfishly I was hoping she she would play Wuhan because 2 months without Iga is just too long. And in my very biased opinion the tour is a bit boring without her in the mix.
Plus it also means the WTA Finals will be a real battle for world #1 again. A spot which Sabalenka could once again take if she were to reach the quarter finals of Wuhan. Muchova stopped her in Bejing but she's always had more success in Wuhan.