Iga Swiatek hit out at the “super intense” schedule after arriving at Wimbledon the day after suffering an agonising defeat in Germany. Swiatek is seeded eighth at the All England Club and will get her tournament under way by playing Polina Kudermetova on Tuesday following a good run at Bad Homburg.

The Polish star reached the final in Germany before falling 6-4 7-5 to Jessica Pegula. The 24-year-old has won five Grand Slam titles – four at the French Open and one at the US Open – but has generally struggled more on grass.

She was delighted to reach the final at Bad Homburg, but the defeat against her American opponent was a painful one. Swiatek was seen in tears on the court on Saturday, using a towel to wipe them away to try and compose herself.

After flying straight to London after the defeat, Swiatek spoke to the media at Wimbledon on Sunday, where she opened up on the difficulties of her life at the top of elite tennis.

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Asked what the tour could do better to support players, she replied: “Well, that's a difficult topic because obviously everybody has different issues or see problems in different things.

“But for me, I think the scheduling is super intense. It's too intense. There's no point for us to play, like, over 20 tournaments in a year. Sometimes we need to sacrifice playing for your country because we need to keep up with playing these WTA 500s, for example, because we're going to get a zero in the ranking.

“I think these kinds of obligations and the rules about mandatory tournaments just put pressure on us. For me the scheduling is pretty intense. I think people would still watch tennis, maybe even more, if we played less tournaments, but the quality, for example, would be better or we would be more consistent because of that.

“So yeah, this is for sure challenging. But tennis is a difficult sport overall. Like, every week you start kind of from the beginning. Yeah, like every week can tell you if you're a great player or you sucked this week, you know?

“You always have to have in the back of your mind that tennis is not your whole life. You've got to give some perspective and also be proud of sometimes even when you don't win, because only one person out of the whole tournament wins.”

Despite falling to Pegula at the final hurdle, Swiatek feels the tournament has given her good preparation for Wimbledon, where her best result saw her reach the quarter finals two years ago. “Just having the experience of playing few matches before, the same as in 2023, yeah, it gives you more confidence,” she said.

“I don't know. You just have to get through some situations on the court, and it gives you the extra experience and kind of the momentum to go forward. I'm really happy I had the opportunity to play there. I played the top players, so yeah, it gives a lot.”