Iga Swiatek won her third consecutive French Open championship and fourth in five years by defeating Jasmine Paolini 6-2, 6-1 in the final on Saturday in Paris.
The top-seeded Swiatek trailed 2-1 early in Court Philippe Chatrier before taking the next 10 games to claim the opening set and go up 5-0 in the second. She stretched her winning streak at Roland Garros to 21 matches, and her career record at the place is now 35-2.
The 23-year-old from Poland is the first woman with three trophies in a row in Paris since Justine Henin from 2005 to 2007.
Swiatek also won the French Open in 2020 and the U.S. Open in 2022 and is now 5-0 in major finals.
WATCH l Swiatek cruises past Paolini for 4th French Open title:
Iga Swiatek had a dominant performance against Jasmine Paolini (6-2, 6-1) to win her fourth career French Open women’s title, third in a row.
The 12th-seeded Paolini, a 28-year-old from Italy, was appearing in a Slam final for the first time.
She had never been past the second round at one of the four most important tennis tournaments until getting to the fourth round at the Australian Open in January. Paolini will play in the French Open women’s doubles final on Sunday with partner Sara Errani against 2023 U.S. Open singles champion Coco Gauff and Katerina Siniakova.
After a scare in the second round against Naomi Osaka, when Swiatek needed to save a match point, this represented a fifth straight lopsided win. Swiatek took every set in that span and only ceded a total of 17 games.
On Saturday, a loud chant of “Let’s go, Jasmine! Let’s go!” arose from two rows of Paolini’s supporters in the lower bowl of the stands, each one wearing a T-shirt in one of the colours of the Italian flag: green, white or red. They would reprise that song, in English, interspersing it with claps.
During the coin toss, Paolini stood mostly still, while Swiatek went through her usual paces, shifting side to side and taking cuts of forehands and backhands.
After Swiatek got the match’s first point, a fan yelled in French, “Jasmine, it’s not over!”
And, actually, it soon looked as if they were right. That’s because Swiatek went through a bit of a shaky stretch, failing to convert a break point in the second game, then getting broken to trail 2-1 after 13 minutes when she flubbed a forehand, sending it way long.
That was Swiatek’s seventh unforced error of the afternoon; Paolini had made only one by then.
Might a true surprise be in the offing? Could Paolini not only make a match of this, but actually win it?
Um, no.
Swiatek immediately reset herself and began playing the sort of tennis that has kept her at No. 1 in the WTA rankings for nearly every week since April 2022. The instincts and footwork to get to almost any shot an opponent can offer. The intimidating, heavy-spin forehands. The pre-match strategy and midmatch adjustments that can shift things her way.
One-way traffic
And once Swiatek got going, there was nothing Paolini could do to slow her down.
Swiatek broke at love right away, capping the game with a return winner off a serve at 87 mph (140 kph). The following game began with a 25-stroke exchange that Swiatek ended with a backhand winner that Paolini did not even try to chase, and it quickly became 3-2.
That was part of a stretch in which Swiatek earned 20 of the last 24 points in the first set.
The one-way traffic continued in the next set, and after just one hour, eight minutes of play, Swiatek was celebrating by dropping to her knees behind a baseline.
Soon, she was sitting on the sideline and used her phone to snap a selfie while holding up four fingers to represent her haul of French Open trophies.
De Groot makes history
Top-ranked Diede de Groot won a record 22nd Grand Slam wheelchair singles title when she rallied to beat unseeded Zhu Zhenzhen 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 in the French Open women’s final earlier on Saturday.
In the men’s wheelchair final, second-seeded Tokito Oda of Japan successfully defended his title at Roland Garros by winning 7-5, 6-3 against No. 3-seeded Argentine Gustavo Fernandez. It was the 18-year-old Oda’s fourth major title.
The 27-year-old De Groot’s victory saw her overtake her Dutch compatriot Esther Vergeer for the most women’s singles titles.
“Of course I’m really proud to now have this record, but at the same time I know the conditions when Esther played,” De Groot said. “She couldn’t play singles at Wimbledon, a lot of the Grand Slams weren’t even called Grand Slams yet. So it’s really not much of a comparison.”
The new Grand Slam singles record holder in women’s wheelchair tennis! ✨<br><br>Congratulations to Diede de Groot on her 22nd major singles title, breaking the record of 21 Slams held by Hall of Famer Esther Vergeer.<br><br>Excellence personified, <a href=” 🏆<a href=” |… <a href=”https://t.co/QmIlS51Mhd”>pic.twitter.com/QmIlS51Mhd</a>
—@TennisHalloFame
Vergeer had a 470-match winning streak in her career, while De Groot’s unbeaten run ended last month on 145.
“Of course I’m really proud of myself, but I’m mainly just proud of myself for keeping it up like this. But for me, Esther will always have this legacy where for such a long time [she was unbeaten], like, 470 matches. That’s how good she was,” De Groot said. “We could be together at the top. I feel like it’s more together instead of which one is better.”
It was also the two-time Paralympic gold medallist De Groot’s 14th straight major title.
De Groot features in a TV ad with French car manufacturer Renault, which has been shown on French television during the tournament. She is one of their three brand ambassadors in tennis along with Frenchman Luca Van Assche and No. 21-ranked Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime.
“It’s really important still for us to be visible in those kind of things, because a lot of people don’t know me, and a lot of people don’t know any of the wheelchair athletes that are playing here,” she said. “So we need help from those big brands. I’m really proud of Renault for doing that.”
The 34-year-old Zhu was looking to win her first Grand Slam title and become only the second Chinese player to win a major singles title in any category outside of juniors since two-time major winner Li Na in 2014.
“She did so well considering it’s her first final,” De Groot said of her opponent. “She can be really proud of herself.”
Oda will now look to defend his Wimbledon title on grass. He has won every major except for the U.S. Open, where he has never been past the quarterfinals.
Source Agencies
