Iga Swiatek falls short in another quarterfinal in Stuttgart

Lot's of positives to take away for Iga despite another quarterfianl loss. 

Improvement was evident, solid from the baseline, more patience building points and more positive body language during unforced errors. 

Serve is still a work in progress (and it really broke down in the 3rd) but that's to be expected with her tweaking it and changing the motion. 

But overall game looking much more solid, things are trending in the right direction with time things will start to click. It's definitely the best I've seen her play this year thus far.

As Iga herself has mentioned things won't happen over night, even specifically pointed out in the most match interview that she is a player who needs matches and wins in order for her game to flow (very much like her idol Rafa). 

Confidence will be the big thing when facing the top 10. 

Right now she doesn't have that so it's hard to trust anything with her game especially on serve. 

I will always wonder had she gone up 3-0 in the 3rd would the match have turned out different. Certainly would have helped the confidence factor. 

So will winning a match from a set up again, same goes for the quarterfinal curse. If she could break through to one final before Roland Garros it'd do a world of good. 

And I think the best chance for that will be Rome. I don't hold much hope for Madrid due to the altitude, but hopefully she can win a few matches just to build on things. 

It'll be interesting if outside clay conditions will help her out more vs the indoor clay. 

Better quality clay coupled with outdoor conditions might just make her feel more sure of her movement and allow her to actually slide instead of tripping and falling as she did in Stuttgart (twice).

While this was another disappointing loss I'm also taking under account Mirra Andreeva's confidence having just won a title in Linz on indoor clay the week prior. 

Hard to win a match when your opponent has confidence in their serve to win them free points while you're fighting for every point with 2nd serves. 

Had she won Iga would have gone back to #3. But ranking will only matter when the wins come, till then we wait and see. 

But I feel encouraged with the new coach, he's trying to make visable technical changes and I think with time Iga will be able to implement them better and it'll start paying off in matches.

On to Madrid we go.

Jazda Iga trust the process.