Leave it up to Iga Swiatek to change the trajectory.

In this case, we’re not talking about her on-court results. During the United Cup press conference Wednesday in Brisbane, Australia, Swiatek (in good fun) wanted to move on from the team camaraderie line of questioning.

She was ready to change it up, which of course, led to questions on her 2022 season, where she finished as the top-ranked player by a landslide. Swiatek, who finished with more than twice as many rankings points as No.2 Ons Jabeur, was quick to admit her season went far better than she could have imagined -- but was also ready to move on.

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“I'm going to try to kind of cut off everything that happened last year and just focus on the future, because I feel like I can take a lot of experience from these tournaments last year,” she said, “but I don't want to really like hold on to that too much, because I want to go forward and kind of focus on my next goals.

United Cup results

“For sure all these press conferences are going to kind of remind me of everything, but my goal is to just focus on the future and try to improve as a tennis player.”

Nonetheless, Swiatek’s 2021 numbers were dominant and worth re-examining. There was a 37-match win streak, a 67-9 (.881) record, two major championships and eight titles overall. Every week, it seemed, she joined some of the game’s greatest players in categories that underlined her excellence.

  • Her 36 weeks in her first run at No.1 is the fourth longest such streak, after Stefanie Graf, Martina Hingis and Serena Williams.
  • In the past 40 years, only Martina Navratilova and Graf (each with 17) won more consecutive matches against players in the Top 10 than Swiatek’s 15.
  • Swiatek is the first woman to win two majors in a single season -- Roland Garros and the US Open -- since Angelique Kerber took the Australian Open and US Open in 2016.

“I mean, her season is right up there with the best in this century,” said Tennis Channel’s Pam Shriver. “Iga’s played everybody they’ve put in front of her.”

Swiatek won 47 hard-courts matches in 2022. In the 2000s, only Kim Clijsters (59 in 2003 and 51 in 2005), Agnieszka Radwanska (52 in 2013), Jelena Jankovic (50 in 2008) and Lindsay Davenport (49 in 2001) had more in a single year. Swiatek finished the 2022 season with 11,085 ranking points -- more than double No.2 Ons Jabeur’s total. That’s the most since Serena Williams in 2013.

And then there’s the not-so-minor category of prize money. Swiatek, still only 21 years old, finished the year with a WTA Tour-leading $9.88 million in prize money. On the ATP, only late surges by Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz allowed them to catch her -- barely. Alcaraz ($10.1 million) received a generous distribution from the ATP bonus pool and Djokovic (9.9 million) won all of his matches at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin -- taking home $2.2 million for winning the final alone.

Chris Evert, the 18-time major champion, was impressed with Swiatek’s winnings, the fifth-highest total in history.

“Love it,” she said. “I think it says a lot about the power of women’s tennis. It says a lot about the excellence of Iga that she was able to maintain that top level of tennis over the period of a year.”

Two members of the Original 9, who famously signed symbolic $1 contracts in 1970 in advance of the inaugural Virginia Slims of Houston tournament, said they were thrilled.

“I think it is fantastic that Iga finished the year making nearly $10 million,” Nancy Richey wrote in an email. “As an Original 9 besides just wanting to have a place to play, we also were hoping to increase the prize money we were playing for so the women could make a good living out of playing the sport we loved.

“I think that has happened and it is very gratifying to see how the women’s game has truly “Come A Long Way Baby!”

Wrote Julie Heldman, another Original 9 member, “Iga Swiatek is a great tennis player, who has earned nearly $10 million this year, which was only possible due to the dedication of the women tennis pros who fought hard for the success of the early women’s pro tour.”

For the record, Serena and Venus Williams head the all-time WTA earnings list, with nearly $95 million and $42 million, respectively. Naomi Osaka and Serena are 1-2 in Forbes magazine’s ranking of 2022’s highest-paid female athletes, which includes endorsements, at $58 million and $45 million.

Now it’s a clean slate, and Swiatek will approach the new season with a different feel. Not only is the Ashleigh Barty, who was the World No.1 retired, but Swiatek understands her results will be vetted much more closely from the outset of the season.

”[Ash] really set the bar pretty high, so I need to like show it to people but also show it to myself that I'm in the right place,” Swiatek said.

Swiatek and Team Poland kick off their United Cup competition on Dec. 31 in Brisbane, when the team takes on Kazakhstan.