Maja Chwalinska advanced to the Roland Garros final on Thursday, completing a run from qualifying to within one match of a major title. The world No. 114 defeated fellow left-hander Diana Shnaider 7-6 (4), 6-4 to become just the second women’s qualifier in Open Era history to reach a Grand Slam final and the first to do so at Roland Garros.

Chwalinska, 24, produced a composed performance in a high-quality contest. After losing a break advantage in the opening set, she saved two break points to hold for 6-5, then took control of the tiebreak by winning the final five points. The Pole struck 32 winners while committing 17 unforced errors. Shnaider finished with a 33-to-36 winners-to-unforced-errors ratio.

The momentum carried into the second set, where the pair traded breaks before Chwalinska secured a third return game to move ahead. After two hours and seven minutes, the victory belonged to the qualifier.

“I mean, like a dream honestly. I don’t know what’s going on,” she said on court afterwards in Paris. “I don’t know what to say. I’m just very happy.”

This is only Chwalinska’s third main-draw appearance at a major; her previous two were at 2022 Wimbledon and the 2025 Australian Open. With the title match still to come, she has the chance to complete one of the most unlikely Grand Slam runs of the season. Should she defeat Mirra Andreeva in Saturday’s championship match, she would join Emma Raducanu as a qualifier to capture a major trophy.

Chwalinska’s run from the qualifying competition to the championship match is a rare achievement in modern tennis and adds a compelling chapter to this year’s event.

Mirra Andreeva will contest her first Grand Slam title after a commanding performance in the Roland Garros semifinals. The 19-year-old became the first player this clay season to beat Marta Kostyuk, recording a 6-1, 6-3 victory in Thursday’s opening women’s semifinal.

“The conditions were very tough today. I couldn’t understand which direction the wind was going,” Andreeva told Marion Bartoli on court. “I’m just happy I was able to stay focused. I told myself to accept everything that happens today on the court. It was a little bit unpredictable.”

The result marked Andreeva’s first win in three meetings with Kostyuk; she had lost their previous two encounters, including the Mutua Madrid Open final in May. Drawing on the experience of a 2024 semifinal at this event, the No. 8 seed sprinted to a 4-0 lead and largely maintained control as gusty conditions complicated timing and movement.

Andreeva’s game plan remained composed and precise. Kostyuk was unable to reproduce the form that had driven a 17-match clay winning streak into the major, and at times vented visible frustration. The only clear lapse from Andreeva arrived at 4-2 in the second set when she was broken at love after a double fault and an errant forehand. She recovered immediately, varying pace to force a re-break and then served out the match on her first opportunity.

Statistically, Kostyuk finished with a minus-19 differential between winners and unforced errors, a telling indicator of how the match tilted. Andreeva, contesting her 13th major main draw, is the youngest woman to reach a Grand Slam final in four years, the last being an 18-year-old Coco Gauff at this event.

The Russian leads the tour with 21 clay-court wins and 35 match wins overall this season. She now bids to become the WTA’s third youngest first-time major champion this century behind Maria Sharapova and Emma Raducanu.

© 2026 Franco Arland

Elina Svitolina captured the WTA 1000 title in Rome, defeating Coco Gauff 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-2 to claim the biggest trophy of her return as a mother. The victory in the final completed a run that saw Svitolina beat three of the Top 4 players in successive rounds: No. 2 Elena Rybakina in the quarterfinals and No. 3 Iga Swiatek in the semifinals, before overcoming the world No. 4 in the championship match.

Svitolina, the current No. 10, produced a gritty performance in the final. Gauff led 4-2 in the opening set and held break points for 5-2, but Svitolina closed out the set with four straight games. The second set featured 10 consecutive holds before Gauff briefly took a 6-5 lead; Svitolina broke back and the pair reached a tiebreak, which Gauff won after rallying from 3-2 down. In the decider, following three holds to open the set, Svitolina ran off five games in a row to take control and sealed the match with a reflex volley into the open court after two hours and 49 minutes.

This is Svitolina’s third Rome title, adding to her wins in 2017 and 2018, and her fifth WTA 1000 title overall, joining Dubai and Toronto from 2017. Since returning to the tour as a mom in 2023, she had previously won three WTA 250 events: Strasbourg in 2023, Rouen in 2025 and Auckland earlier this year. The Rome victory also marked a milestone 50th Top 10 win for her career. Her record in WTA finals now stands at 20-5.

The Rome trophy is the most significant title won by a mother on tour since Victoria Azarenka’s WTA 1000 victory in Cincinnati in 2020.