Barely out of her teens, Polish tennis ace Iga Świątek has made history as well as waves in the sport. When she won the singles title at the 2020 French Open, aged 19, she became the first player from her country to win a Grand Slam title and the youngest singles champion at a major event since the likes of Nadal and Sharapova during the mid-2000s. She is currently ranked as the fourth-best female player in the world and was voted the WTA’s Most Improved Player and Fan Favourite Singles Player of the Year in 2020.

Świątek was born in Warsaw in May 2001. Encouraged by her former-Olympic-rower father, she took up swimming at a young age but eventually switched to tennis. The switch paid off as she eventually became the fifth-highest-ranked junior player in the world after winning Junior Wimbledon in 2018. That year also saw her win a gold medal in doubles at the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires. She exploded onto the ITF Circuit in 2016, winning each of the seven singles finals that she reached. In 2019, she entered the World Top 50 for the first time, beat the likes of Caroline Wozniacki and Wang Qiang and made the fourth round of the French Open.

2020, however, was her breakthrough year. Entering the French Open ranked 54th in the world, she went on to beat world-number-six Sofia Kenin to win the singles tournament. In addition to all the other records this broke, it made her the lowest-ranked French Open champion in the history of WTA rankings. 2021 was another brilliant year for her as she became the only player to make the second week of all four Grand Slam tournaments. She kicked off 2022 with a semi-final appearance in the Australian Open.