Maja Chwalinska could not apply the fairytale ending to her French Open Cinderella story as teenager Mirra Andreeva claimed her first grand slam title.
The 19-year-old’s 6-3 6-2 victory makes her the youngest women’s champion in Paris since Monica Seles back in 1992 and the first Russian to win a major singles trophy since the invasion of Ukraine four years ago. While the political landscape will make this a difficult triumph to cheer for many, there is no doubt Andreeva, who lives and trains in France, is a phenomenal talent and a worthy slam champion.
When a final winner landed in the corner, Andreeva, who is also the first Russian female grand slam singles champion since Maria Sharapova here in 2014, dropped to her knees in celebration.
Attention ahead of the match had understandably been dominated by the remarkable run from qualifying to the final of 24-year-old Pole Chwalinska, who had the vast majority of the crowd support.
Nine successive victories put her one win away from matching Emma Raducanu’s unprecedented achievement in New York in 2021.
Chwalinska is no teenage dreamer, though, having battled away on the lower reaches of the tour for years, including struggling with depression, without ever making the top 100 or beating a top-50 player.
She arrived in Paris in good form but not even in her most fanciful moments could she have imagined how things would play out over the next three weeks.
Four successive victories over top-50 players, including Andreeva’s doubles partner Diana Shnaider in the last four, made Chwalinska at 114 in the world the lowest-ranked finalist since the inception of the rankings in 1975.
She will climb to 21 on Monday, and Wimbledon organisers will look churlish in the extreme if they do not give her a wild card for a tournament where she would now be seeded. Actor Brad Pitt was among those sat courtside for a match no one would have predicted and from which it was hard to know what to expect.
There could not have been a bigger contrast between this cat-and-mouse contest and the power battle at the Australian Open final that Elena Rybakina won against Aryna Sabalenka.
There were clearly nerves at play on both sides, while the wind was an extra complicating factor, and some of the early exchanges were so tentative they were more club tennis than grand slam final.
Chwalinska was the first player to hold serve in the fifth game, prompting wild celebrations from her army of red-and-white clad fans, but slowly Andreeva began to get a handle on how to combat the unorthodox patterns of her opponent and four games in a row gave her the opening set. Left-hander Chwalinska’s unusual use of spins and lack of pace had bamboozled previous opponents but Andreeva was a step up in class, the first top-10 player the Pole had ever faced, and she began to look more and more comfortable.
Andreeva was perhaps the worst opponent for Chwalinska given her high tennis IQ and the variety she also has in her game, and the Polish flags stayed draped on knees as the games ticked away. Chwalinska finally stopped the run against her at nine games and, when a nervy Andreeva blew her first chance to serve out the victory, a glimmer of hope appeared, but a final backhand from the Russian clinched the title.