We will have a brand new champion going into tomorrow night’s Roland Garros Final as one defending champ who dominated all of this over the last 2-3 years had been knocked out by a little surprise.
That player who turns out to be Poland’s Iga Swiatek even though she fought hard to hang in there for the most part.
It’s a bummer her errors and faults were the ones that Iga was struggling to keep the tone of her opponent down.
That doesn’t mean Iga will be forgotten where she’s made this clay court her go-to fortress for winning grand slams and it remains to be seen if she’s able to keep herself focused going into Wimbledon.
Instead, current US Open champion Aryna Sabalenka will be the one going through and it will be her first Roland Garros singles final. She always plays a top game from start to finish having got away from Iga’s every turn and move. It wasn’t not an easy one as this goes on but at least Sabalenka had other ideas that Swiatek didn’t have where she won an easy third and final set.
In the other semi out where one will be up against Sabalenka for tomorrow’s final, it will be a familiar face in USA’s Coco Gauff after she was too good for Frenchwoman Lois Boisson. For Lois, she enjoyed one hell of ride on home soil from an upset opening round win against 24th seed Elise Mertens to Jessica Pegula in the last 16 & rising teen Mirra Andreeva the other day.
That homecoming journey and even a huge leap of faith following a year away on the sidelines due to an ACL knee injury has just come to an end at the Roland Garros when Lois just couldn’t grasp the long game ones to outmuscle Gauff with the higher gears. Since it’s her first grand slam proper campaign though that began on an enormous high, we’ll see if she can continue to keep things up in the other majors – top shelf stuff and she’s only 22.
Back to Gauff, as said, she’s simply too good with superior mental and physical strength on what has been a 10/10 performance as if she’s at there playing chess for like hours likewise on the court.
She will go into tomorrow’s final for the second time since 2022 this time against Sabalenka and not Iga.
Coco did beat Sabalenka once before back in the 2023 US Open Final following a homecoming triumph but again, it’s a completely different track where both of them have yet to win this grand slam.
Other than that, our Australian performance in the women’s singles category at this year’s tournament?
Grateful enough that we had a bit of a boost thanks to adopted Aussie from Russia in Daria Kasatkina, who did so well up till the last 16 including an upset win v 10th seed Paula Badosa beforehand (3R) but then her friend Mirra Andrevva stood in the way, even though they know each other very well from way back when.
But it’s encouraging to see that kind of progress since Ash Barty left despite not having a home grown product from our end. Although Emerson Jones is one the next big things and she also did well in the women’s junior singles there; her next game will be in the semis tonight v Austrian Lilli Tagger – best of luck to her.
