Iga Swiatek explains why she has been practising with tape over her mouth ahead of Canadian Open

Iga Swiatek has revealed the reason why she was seen preparing for the Canadian Open by practising with a piece of tape over her mouth.

During her preparations for the tournament she surprised on-lookers by playing with a piece of tape across her mouth in a practice session.

“It’s harder to breathe when you’re only breathing with your nose, and it’s easier for my heart rate to go up,” Swiatek said ahead of her opening match against Karolina Pliskova.

“I’m not going to explain it to you perfectly because I’m not an expert. Sometimes I don’t get the things they tell me to do, but I’m doing that for a long time now so it got pretty easy.

“But for sure you can see the difference in how everything you do on the court is getting more and more hard with that tape on your mouth. So I guess it’s the way to kind of work on my endurance by not having me run so fast and do extreme things.”

The Canadian Open marks the start of Swiatek’s North American hard-court lead-up to her US Open title defence later this month.

She says she feels “more confident” heading into this stage of the season than she did last year, when she saw her 37-match streak ended at Wimbledon and then lost in the quarter-finals in Warsaw, which was played on clay rather than hard courts as it was this summer.

“I remember for sure I had some technical struggles that I focused more in terms of where I wanted to improve, but I was kind of stuck with a few shots that I didn’t like. This year I don’t have that. I feel more confident.”

“I think playing Warsaw on hard court changed a lot the perspective because last year, switching from grass to clay and then to hard court was really tricky.

“This year, I feel like it’s a really nice process without any extra obstacles. So it was pretty easy for me to just focus on work.

“I think it’s great before the whole swing and before the US Open.”

Swiatek holds a 744-point lead over world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka.

Both were beaten in the third round of the Canadian Open last year so have the opportunity to gain ranking points this time around.