Maja Chwalinska v Mirra Andreeva: French Open 2026 women’s singles final – live

Chwalinska says:

I feel like I’m in the bubble. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just very happy to be here. After the tournament there will be time to process it and breathe in, breathe out. Let’s not pretend someone expected it. I was outside the top 100 and now I’m in the final of a grand slam. It is hard to process.

Andreeva says:

I’m getting closer – I’m getting older, a little bit more mature with every match I play, a little bit more experience. I’ve been trying to work on being more calm, more positive. I’m very focused, and I felt like recently I have been trying to do a lot of different stuff. Maybe now I have found what’s been working very well for me, and I’m really trying to stick to that and do it every match that I play every time.

Andreeva
1R def Fiona Ferro 6-3, 6-3
2R def Marina Bassols Ribera 3-6, 6-1, 6-1
3R def Marie Bouzkova (27) 6-3, 6-2
4R def Jil Teichmann 6-3, 6-2
QF def Sorana Cirstea (18) 6-0, 6-3
SF def Marta Kostyuk (15) 6-1, 6-3

Chwalinska
Qualifying 1R def Alice Rame 6-0, 6-3
Q2R def Carole Monnet 6-0, 6-1
Q3R def Suzan Lamens 7-6 (4), 7-5
1R def Zheng Qinwen 6-4, 6-0
2R def Elise Mertens (23) 6-4, 6-0
3R def Maria Sakkari 1-6, 6-3, 6-2
4R def Diane Parry 6-3, 6-2
QF def Anna Kalinskaya (22) 7-6 (3), 6-3
SF def Diana Shnaider (25) 7-6 (4), 6-4

Road to the final. Both players have dropped only one set so far, though with all the destruction in the draw, neither has had to face a top-10 opponent. Andreeva did, however, impressively snap the 17-match winning streak of Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in the semi-finals, with the Russian showing great composure and maturity amid the tense political backdrop to the match. Chwalinska has upset the Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen, along with the seeds Elise Mertens, Anna Kalinskaya and Diana Shnaider, doing to Shnaider what Shnaider did to Aryna Sabalenka in the quarter-finals.

Tale of the tape

Andreeva – Chwalinska
9 Age 24
8 Seeding –
8 World ranking 114
0 Grand slam titles 0
0 Previous slam finals 0
5 Singles titles 0
0 Head-to-head 0

TNT Sports shows some live shots of Chwalinska backstage, lying under a blanket on a sofa. She looks like she’s about to embark on a Netflix binge rather than her first grand slam final.

Fancy reading Tumaini’s preview too? Sure you do:

The summer of 2022 took Maja Chwalinska to the familiar surroundings of the Bank of England Sports Club in Roehampton. A world away from the real thing, the then world No 170 worked her way through three gruelling Wimbledon qualifying matches against players ranked outside the top 150 to successfully make it to the main draw. She then marked her long-awaited appearance in the grounds of the All England Club with a big win over the world No 79 Katerina Siniakova before being dismantled in two sets in her second-round match.

For the past four years, that solitary main-draw victory was the pinnacle of Chwalinska’s career at the biggest events. The only other time the Pole qualified for a grand slam, the Australian Open last year, she was thrashed 6-0, 6-1 by Jule Niemeier, the world No 93, in the first round. She has failed to make it out of the preliminary rounds on 12 occasions and there have even been times over the past few years when her ranking dropped so low that she was unable to enter qualifying.

Seemingly out of nowhere, she now stands on the verge of history, a victory away from becoming the first player to win the French Open as a qualifier when she faces the eighth seed Mirra Andreeva in Saturday’s final. Since her first qualifying match on 18 May, Chwalinska, now ranked 114 in the world, has rolled through nine consecutive victories across three weeks, losing one set.

This is certainly one of the top two most shocking grand slam runs in history and it may not be second on that list. The only other result that bears any sort of comparison is, of course, Emma Raducanu’s 2021 US Open triumph, the only other time a qualifier has reached a major final. Considering her complete dearth of experience at the very start of her career, no player will ever have a breakthrough like Raducanu’s, but her inexperience also made it difficult to assess her potential. Chwalinska, however, is a known entity who has been competing for more than 10 years. All evidence suggested something like this was never going to happen.

Chwalinska is small and easily overpowered, standing only 1m 64cm (5ft 5in), but her lack of physical strength has forced her to nurture a different style of play. At Roland Garros she has worked through her opponents one paper cut at a time, constantly varying the speed, spin and trajectory of her shots while putting the ball in the toughest positions around the court. She also has been brilliant defensively. With the added stress and tension in the final weeks of a grand slam draw, she has been an absolute nightmare to face. On Thursday, Diana Shnaider looked like a broken woman in the final moments of their match after failing to find a way past her.

You can read the rest here:

Britain’s Alfie Hewett is also under way in the men’s wheelchair singles final, against his great rival, Japan’s Tokito Oda, with Hewett a break down, 3-2, in the opening set.