3 hours ago
13
Key events
Andreeva breaks: Chwalinska 1-2 Andreeva* (*denotes next server)
From 15-all, Andreeva advances to 15-30 by gobbling up the short ball. She clearly wants to avoid getting into a game of cat and mouse with Chwalinska; she’s trying to settle the points early wherever possible. An unforced error from Chwalinska gives Andreeva two break points at 15-40 – Chwalinska has played so consistently throughout this tournament but there have already been a few rare let-ups in this match – and Andreeva breaks on the second BP when Chwalinska shanks the ball into the skies! So three games played, three breaks – can Andreeva now hold and change the serving script?
Chwalinska breaks: Chwalinska* 1-1 Andreeva (*denotes next server)
Andreeva, though, is in danger of undoing her good work from the opening game, as she drops 0-30 down. A winning volley reduces her arrears to 15-30, and it should really then be 30-all, but Andreeva steps forward to the short ball … and hammers wide! So Chwalinska has two break points to break back immediately. The Pole prods long under little pressure on the first, Andreeva decides to copy Chwalinska’s moon balls on the second, and they pretty much go to space and back before the point eventually ends when Andreeva’s backhand breaks down! They’re back on serve and already this is compelling stuff.
Andreeva breaks: Chwalinska 0-1 Andreeva* (*denotes next server)
Mesdames et messieurs, Chwalinska will serve first. The qualifier steps up … and double faults. Ach. She jumps up and down on the spot, to shake off some of those nerves, and it works. Already the lefty is throwing in those loopy balls of hers and it gets her to 15-all and 30-15. After a lengthy rally, Chwalinska goes for the drop shot, but Andreeva, so quick on her feet and in mind, is wise to it, and drills a winner down the line! 30-all. Which develops to deuce. And Andreeva smacks away a forehand winner for break point! Chwalinska saves it with a delicate drop volley, but very quickly it’s break point No 2. And then No 3. The pair go down the middle, before engaging in a cross-court exchange, and Andreeva breaks with a backhand winner!
Tik, tok, tik, tok, they’re warming up. Unsurprisingly, given Chwalinska’s lack of matches at the highest level, these two haven’t played each other before, so we don’t have anything to go on there. Despite their vastly different career trajectories, there are some similarities between them – they both play very smart, have tremendous variety in their games and defend well – but Andreeva can do all those things better. And she’s also developing a more aggressive game and is a lightning fast mover. If she’s able to keep her emotions in check, it’s hard to see anything other than a straight-sets win. But if this tournament has taught us anything, it’s that we should make predictions at our peril.
Boris says he’s going with his heart and is tipping Chwalinska to win. Tim Henman is going with his head. “The difference is Chwalinska is hoping to win, Andreeva is expecting to. She looks so confident and ready to lift the title. This is the moment she’s going to step up and win her first grand slam title,” he says.
And finally here they are! The Pole Iga Swiatek sorry Chwalinska arrives first and she’s smiling, almost bashfully; Andreeva follows and she’s got her game face on.
TNT Sports are now screening a montage of Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Lindsay Davenport and Caroline Wozniacki talking about when they won their first slam title. Spine-tingling stuff. Hopefully Andreeva and Chwalinska aren’t watching – it would probably make the nerves jangle even more. Now here’s Boris Becker on the Chatrier roof, who proudly declares he’s been practising how to pronounce Chwalinska. It’s Hfa-leen-ska, in case you were wondering.
Ho hum. We’re still waiting.
At the moment, the roof is still open, with a flash of blue sky. But there is a threat that rain could turn this into an indoor match.
We’re still waiting for the players, with a dance performance taking place on Chatrier before they arrive. In the meantime, here’s a bit of a tear jerker to get you in the mood:
Do remember you can get in touch with any predictions too.
“At 9 years old, presumably Andreeva is the youngest ever grand slam finalist,” says Brendan Murphy, pointing out my typo in the tale of the tape. Oops! That would be beyond even Andreeva’s prodigious levels. At 19, she’s the third-youngest Roland Garros finalist this century behind 18-year-old Coco Gauff in 2022 and 17-year-old Kim Clijsters in 2001, and she’s aiming to become the youngest French Open champion since Monica Seles in 1992. So she’s in fine company, that’s for sure.
“Hi Katy,” emails Victoria Bainbridge. “Fun fact: Chwalinska is still on the entry list for my local event next week – the WTA 125 at Ilkley (West Yorks). She’s seventh direct entrant with a world ranking at entry date of 113. She won’t be playing it now of course but it’s another concrete reminder of the road she will no longer have to travel.” Ha. Imagine if she did turn up though! But it’s absolutely crazy what a difference three weeks has made – Chwalinska is already projected to be the world No 21 next week and No 14 if she wins.
Chwalinska says:
I feel like I’m in the bubble. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just very happy to be here. After the tournament there will be time to process it and breathe in, breathe out. Let’s not pretend someone expected it. I was outside the top 100 and now I’m in the final of a grand slam. It is hard to process.
Andreeva says:
I’m getting closer - I’m getting older, a little bit more mature with every match I play, a little bit more experience. I’ve been trying to work on being more calm, more positive. I’m very focused, and I felt like recently I have been trying to do a lot of different stuff. Maybe now I have found what’s been working very well for me, and I’m really trying to stick to that and do it every match that I play every time.
Andreeva
1R def Fiona Ferro 6-3, 6-3
2R def Marina Bassols Ribera 3-6, 6-1, 6-1
3R def Marie Bouzkova (27) 6-3, 6-2
4R def Jil Teichmann 6-3, 6-2
QF def Sorana Cirstea (18) 6-0, 6-3
SF def Marta Kostyuk (15) 6-1, 6-3
Chwalinska
Qualifying 1R def Alice Rame 6-0, 6-3
Q2R def Carole Monnet 6-0, 6-1
Q3R def Suzan Lamens 7-6 (4), 7-5
1R def Zheng Qinwen 6-4, 6-0
2R def Elise Mertens (23) 6-4, 6-0
3R def Maria Sakkari 1-6, 6-3, 6-2
4R def Diane Parry 6-3, 6-2
QF def Anna Kalinskaya (22) 7-6 (3), 6-3
SF def Diana Shnaider (25) 7-6 (4), 6-4
Road to the final. Both players have dropped only one set so far, though with all the destruction in the draw, neither has had to face a top-10 opponent. Andreeva did, however, impressively snap the 17-match winning streak of Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in the semi-finals, with the Russian showing great composure and maturity amid the tense political backdrop to the match. Chwalinska has upset the Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen, along with the seeds Elise Mertens, Anna Kalinskaya and Diana Shnaider, doing to Shnaider what Shnaider did to Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter-finals.
Tale of the tape
Andreeva – Chwalinska
19 Age 24
8 Seeding -
8 World ranking 114
0 Grand slam titles 0
0 Previous slam finals 0
5 Singles titles 0
0 Head-to-head 0
TNT Sports shows some live shots of Chwalinska backstage, lying under a blanket on a sofa. She looks like she’s about to embark on a Netflix binge rather than her first grand slam final.
Tumaini Carayol’s preview
Fancy reading Tumaini’s preview too? Sure you do:
The summer of 2022 took Maja Chwalinska to the familiar surroundings of the Bank of England Sports Club in Roehampton. A world away from the real thing, the then world No 170 worked her way through three gruelling Wimbledon qualifying matches against players ranked outside the top 150 to successfully make it to the main draw. She then marked her long-awaited appearance in the grounds of the All England Club with a big win over the world No 79 Katerina Siniakova before being dismantled in two sets in her second-round match.
For the past four years, that solitary main-draw victory was the pinnacle of Chwalinska’s career at the biggest events. The only other time the Pole qualified for a grand slam, the Australian Open last year, she was thrashed 6-0, 6-1 by Jule Niemeier, the world No 93, in the first round. She has failed to make it out of the preliminary rounds on 12 occasions and there have even been times over the past few years when her ranking dropped so low that she was unable to enter qualifying.
Seemingly out of nowhere, she now stands on the verge of history, a victory away from becoming the first player to win the French Open as a qualifier when she faces the eighth seed Mirra Andreeva in Saturday’s final. Since her first qualifying match on 18 May, Chwalinska, now ranked 114 in the world, has rolled through nine consecutive victories across three weeks, losing one set.
This is certainly one of the top two most shocking grand slam runs in history and it may not be second on that list. The only other result that bears any sort of comparison is, of course, Emma Raducanu’s 2021 US Open triumph, the only other time a qualifier has reached a major final. Considering her complete dearth of experience at the very start of her career, no player will ever have a breakthrough like Raducanu’s, but her inexperience also made it difficult to assess her potential. Chwalinska, however, is a known entity who has been competing for more than 10 years. All evidence suggested something like this was never going to happen.
Chwalinska is small and easily overpowered, standing only 1m 64cm (5ft 5in), but her lack of physical strength has forced her to nurture a different style of play. At Roland Garros she has worked through her opponents one paper cut at a time, constantly varying the speed, spin and trajectory of her shots while putting the ball in the toughest positions around the court. She also has been brilliant defensively. With the added stress and tension in the final weeks of a grand slam draw, she has been an absolute nightmare to face. On Thursday, Diana Shnaider looked like a broken woman in the final moments of their match after failing to find a way past her.
You can read the rest here:
Britain’s Alfie Hewett is also under way in the men’s wheelchair singles final, against his great rival, Japan’s Tokito Oda, with Hewett a break down, 3-2, in the opening set.
Patten and Heliovaara do have one big consolation though: they’ll be the joint world No 1s when the new rankings come out on Monday.
Already today: Britain’s Henry Patten hasn’t been able to add to his grand slam collection, losing the men’s doubles final alongside Finland’s Harri Heliovaara. Patten and Heliovaara, the 2024 Wimbledon and 2025 Australian Open winners, lost 6-4, 6-2 against the defending champions Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos, the Spanish-Argentinian duo, who’ve now gone back-to-back at Roland Garros.
Preamble
Salut! The teenage prodigy vs the 24-year-old qualifier and 500-1 outsider; as paths to a first grand slam final go, Mirra Andreeva’s and Maja Chwalinska’s couldn’t be more different.
Andreeva, having burst on to the WTA Tour as the most precocious of 15-year-olds in 2023, before reaching the French Open semi-finals in 2024, has long been tipped for major glory, and now, aged 19, the Russian appears to be finding the temperament to add to her tremendous talents and take that final step.
Chwalinska, after moving through the junior ranks in Poland with Iga Swiatek, struggled to break through as a pro, and after failing to qualify for Wimbledon in 2021 she took an indefinite break from tennis because of depression. “I pushed at the beginning, but then I just couldn’t get out of bed any more,” she says. “I was lifeless. I knew I needed to take a break. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to come back.”
When she did feel strong enough to return she qualified for her first ever grand slam, winning one round at Wimbledon in 2022, her only match victory at a major before this incroyable and improbable stroll in Paris, which started in qualifying 19 days ago. Nine victories and just one dropped set later, Emma Raducanu’s tag as the only qualifier to have won a slam is under threat, and the only stress has been how she would pay her hotel bill in the early rounds – not a problem now she’s guaranteed at least £1.2m for reaching the final.
What has made the diminutive Chwalinska’s run even more entertaining is the way in which she’s done it, with her craft and cunning confounding her more powerful opponents, offering a throwback in a sport dominated by huge hitters. But the problem for Chwalinska today is that Andreeva isn’t only able to hit the ball hard – she marries that with huge variety and boasts one of the highest IQs in tennis. In Andreeva, Chwalinska is facing a far more accomplished version of herself.
It means the toughest battle for Andreeva today could lie on her own side of the net: can she maintain her new-found emotional equilibrium and deal with being the standout favourite in the biggest match of her life? It’s going to fun finding out.
La finale commence: 15h à Paris/2pm UK. Restez à l’affût!
