Because of how different clay court tennis is stylistically from hard court or grass court, the French Open lends itself to dominance by players that have mastered that surface. On the men’s side, we saw Rafael Nadal lord over the clay for nearly two decades, winning 14 French Open titles.
On the women’s side, Iga Swiatek has become the queen of Roland-Garros, coming into 2025 as the winner of the last three French Opens and four of the last five. Swiatek arrived at Thursday’s semifinal match against world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka having dropped just one set all tournament (the opening set of the fourth round against Elena Rybakina), but her quest for four straight French Open titles came to an end against the hard-hitting Sabalenka (7-6(1), 4-6, 6-0).
The world No. 1 came out hot, winning the first three games of the match to take an early advantage. Despite appearing frustrated early, Swiatek battled back to force a first set tiebreaker, but Sabalenka had the answers and cruised through the tiebreak at 7-1 to win the first set.
In the second set, it was Swiatek that put Sabelenka on the back foot and had her visibly frustrated and being very vocal with her box, as the Polish star bounced back to win the…
