Chwalinska's fairytale ends in Roland Garros final against Andreeva

BarcelonaSport sometimes makes fairy tales seem real. All those youngsters who want to be like Serena Williams or Rafa Nadal dream that one day they will reach a Grand Slam final. Few achieve it. But, from time to time, in tennis, logic seems to break into a thousand pieces and an unexpected guest reaches the final. It's as if the system failed and a door opened for a modest athlete. This year, a second-tier player who has been competing for years without making much noise has reached the great final of Roland Garros. The Polish Maja Chwalinska arrived in Paris without attracting anyone's attention and has become, as if by magic, the woman of the moment. In the great final, however, she could not continue surprising everyone and lost in two sets against the Russian Mirra Andreeva, 19 years old. It is the first major title for the Siberian player, who officially competes without a flag, as sanctions against Russian athletes are still in force after the invasion of Ukraine. Andreeva won 6-3 and 6-2 in 1 hour and 22 minutes. Andreeva, coached by the Spaniard Conchita Martínez, has become the first Russian to lift the cup since Maria Sharapova in 2014 and the youngest winner since Monica Seles' third title in 1992.

On the central court, however, Chwalinska shared the spotlight with the champion, as never before had a player forced to play the preliminary round reached the final in Paris. She has achieved it. The life of players participating in the preliminary round is not easy. While the favorites arrive a week later and rest in the best hotels in the city, people like Chwalinska arrive on a low-cost flight, sleep in an apartment like any tourist who wants to see the Eiffel Tower, and arrive at Roland Garros without anyone recognizing her, with the challenge of overcoming other anonymous players who already do enough by overcoming the preliminary round. The Pole, however, started winning and hasn't stopped until reaching the grand final. The world's number 114 player had beaten another Russian, Diana Shnaider, in the semifinals in two sets (7-6 and 6-4). This year's edition has been dominated by Eastern European players, as in the quarterfinals the qualifiers were from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and Belarus (the world number 1, Aryna Sabalenka, eliminated by Shnaider).

Chwalinska, who was born 24 years ago in Dabrowa Górnicza, a town in Silesia, has been competing on the circuit for years, always keeping a close eye on the achievements of her compatriot Iga Swiatek, one of the best players of the last decade. Swiatek and Chwalinska were training partners for the Polish junior team and, in fact, partnered in international tournaments at fifteen, when together they became European champions. In 2017, she was a finalist at the Australian Open juniors, also partnering with Swiatek. But then each went their own way. Swiatek won four times at Roland Garros. Chwalinska, on the other hand, had only won one match in Grand Slam tournaments in six years. Only one since her debut in Australia in 2020. Now at Roland Garros, she has won nine consecutive matches, and has only lost one set on her way to the final. She has been forced to look for a hotel to extend her stay, while her friends and family looked for tickets to fly to French soil. When asked about the sportswear she usually plays in, Chwalinska admitted: "There's no secret, I don't have any sponsorship deals." In other words, she buys the clothes she likes, while her rivals are dressed by brands and have good advertising contracts. She, for now, not yet.

Chwalinska has surprised everyone, especially because her playing style is not the most common nowadays, with an old-school two-handed backhand. She is not a modern player, but this season she had decided, wisely, to bet everything on the clay court season, and has achieved good results in smaller tournaments that have allowed her to arrive very focused at the facilities in western Paris. It is a kind of redemption, as Chwalinska has not had an easy time getting here.

In 2021, she announced on social media that she was taking a break from tennis for a few months. She loved it so much and had worked so hard that the game was becoming a torture. In 2019, she suffered from depression, which led her to stop for even longer. "I was suffering a lot. At first, I pushed through, thinking I just needed to be strong and keep training, but there came a point when I couldn't even get out of bed. Honestly, I felt lifeless. I guess I needed to stop, because otherwise, I couldn't even live. I needed this break and didn't know if I would return or not. After a few months, I decided to come back. I needed to sort some things out in my head. I'm glad I did it," she explained upon her return to the circuit.

Tennis hadn't seen a similar story since the 2021 US Open, when the young British player Emma Raducanu was crowned champion. Never before had a woman who started in the qualifying rounds been a champion. Now the Polish player will try to repeat Raducanu's feat, keeping in mind that the British player, since then, has not progressed beyond the third round in any of the four Grand Slam tournaments. For now, Chwalinska has secured a leap from being world number 114 to entering the top 25 players. For the first time, she is as famous as Swiatek, who has become her biggest admirer and has helped her with advice, just as they did when they were 15 years old and teammates. But Andreeva has brought her fairytale to an end. Now we will have to see how the young Siberian evolves, and if this Roland Garros was just a stroke of luck. And we will keep following Chwalinska, who will leave Paris with commercial brands that now want to sign her. Despite losing the final, she has also triumphed.

Alexander Zverev's big opportunity

In this Sunday's men's final, German Alexander Zverev will finally seek to break the curse he has with Grand Slams, in a final where he starts as the big favorite against Italian Flavio Cobolli, who does not give up on causing a surprise and having his country's anthem played at Philippe Chatrier half a century after Adriano Panatta's triumph. Zverev has reached five semi-finals in six years in Paris and is considered the best player of the moment who has never won a Grand Slam. Without Alcaraz, Sinner, and Djokovic, this is his great opportunity.