The fairy tale that moves everyone at Roland Garros

BarcelonaSport makes fairy tales seem real at times. 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 arrives at the final. It's as if the system fails and a door opens for a modest athlete. This year, a second-tier player who has been competing for years without making much noise has reached the grand final of Roland Garros. The Pole Maja Chwalinska arrived in Paris without attracting anyone's attention and has magically become the woman of the moment.

Never before had a player forced to play the qualifying rounds reached the final in Paris. She has achieved it. The life of players participating in the qualifying rounds 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 are already doing enough by overcoming the qualifying rounds. The Pole, however, started winning and hasn't stopped until reaching the grand final. The world number 114 player will fight to be champion on Saturday against the Russian Mirra Andreeva. In the semifinals, she defeated another Russian, Diana Shnaider, 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 (world number 1, Aryna Sabalenka, eliminated by Shnaider).

Born 24 years ago in Dąbrowa Górnicza, a town in Silesia, Chwalinska has been competing on the circuit for years, always keeping an 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, paired up in international tournaments at 15, 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 she debuted in Australia in 2020. Now at Roland Garros, she has won nine consecutive matches, and has only lost one set. She has been forced to look for a hotel to extend her stay, while her friends and family were looking for tickets to fly to French soil. When asked about the sportswear she usually plays in, Chwalinska admitted: "There is no secret, I don't have any sponsorship contract." That is, she buys the clothes she likes, while her rivals are all dressed in branded clothing 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 she has obtained good results in minor tournaments that have allowed her to arrive very energized 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. Already in 2019, she began to suffer from depression, which led her to stop years later. "I was suffering a lot. At first, I pushed through, I thought I just needed to be strong and keep training, but there came a point where 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 I didn't know if I would come back or not. After a few months, I decided to return. I needed to sort some things out in my head. I'm glad I did," 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 advanced past the third round of any of the four Grand Slams. For now, Chwalinska has secured her move from being ranked 114th in the world to entering the top 25 players of the moment. For the first time, she is as famous as Swiatek, who has become her great admirer, advises her, and helps her with tips, just as they did when they were 15 years old and teammates. If Chwalinska defeats Andreeva, both can say they have won in Paris. And the fairy tale would come true.