How Aryna Sabalenka dethroned Iga Swiatek, and Coco Gauff cracked Lois Boisson’s Cinderella slipper

It took just a couple of minutes for Aryna Sabalenka to reach full roar at Roland Garros on Thursday.

She had broken her opponent, Iga Swiatek, to start their semifinal, and now she had a game point on her serve to go up 2-0. The next rally ended with the two women near each other at the net. Swiatek popped a ball up that Sabalenka could have easily just tapped into the open court to finish the point. But this was not the time for tapping. Instead, she took a full cut, with two hands on the racquet, and let out a titanic scream in Swiatek’s direction as she pummeled the ball away.

A not-so-subtle message had been sent. After spending most of this decade in Swiatek’s shadow, and watching her win Roland Garros four times, Sabalenka finally had her chance to play her there, and she was going to come for her crown with every shot she had, and every sound she could make.

“I felt like I have to be brave if I want to win, and I have to put extra pressure on her,” Sabalenka said of her mindset coming in. “So I was just, like, following the tactic.”

Sabalenka kept following that tactic in the next game, when she fired an 84 MPH service return right up the middle that was past Swiatek before she had even begun to move for it. When Swiatek tried to fight fire with fire, she lost control of her forehands, and was quickly down a double break. It looked like Sabalenka was going to set the record straight, in a hurry, about who was No. 1 now.

“The pace was from her super fast…especially at the beginning of the match, she played, you know, just kind of as hard as possible and pretty risky,” Swiatek said. “So it was just hard to get into any rally.”

“And then you know, I was able to do that.”

Swiatek was indeed able to get herself into the rallies, starting in the fourth game. As any three-time defending champ should be expected to do, she dug in, fought back, and reminded Sabalenka and everyone else that she can pummel the ball with maximum pace, too.

Sabalenka and Swiatek are both, in tennis terms, control freaks. They don’t like to be along for the ride, for slightly different reason. In Swiatek’s case, her long forehand swing can be rushed; in Sabalenka’s case, she tends to get frustrated and overhit when an opponent takes the initiative from her.

So it made sense that the two would spend the next set and a half in a prolonged wrestling match for control of the points. Both flattened their forehands; the RPMs on their shots decreased considerably from earlier matches. They both went big on as many returns as possible. They traded winners and errors from one point to the next. They traded breaks for a while. Then they started trading holds. And they ended up trading the first two sets. The points were fast and furious.

“I think it was a really high-level match,” Sabalenka said.

In the third set, though, only Sabalenka could maintain that level. The final momentum change came with Swiatek serving at 0-1. That’s when Sabalenka rediscovered her range on her forehand, and Swiatek lost hers again. In a replay of the first set, Sabalenka broke with a powerful forehand that Swiatek couldn’t handle. The shot also seemed to break Swiatek’s newfound confidence; after that, the shanks that had plagued her this spring returned. When Sabalenka held for 3-0, she let out another roof-rattling yell, and ran away with a 7-6 (1), 4-6, 6-0 win, to end Swiatek’s Roland Garros win streak at 26.

“The second game [of the third set] was the key game, key moment,” Sabalenka said. “I think after that game, I kind of, like, stepped in even more, and she was under so much pressure.”

“I’m super happy with the win today and beating Iga at Roland Garros. It’s just something unbelievable and something I’m super proud of.”

As in the Sabalenka-Swiatek semi, there was a moment at the beginning of Coco Gauff’s 6-1, 6-2 win over Lois Boisson that would foreshadow everything that was to come. It happened, in fact, on the first point.

The American and the Frenchwoman, who are about as quick as anyone on tour, immediately engaged in a rapid-fire rally that sent them scrambling sideline-to-sideline. Boisson did what had been working for her all tournament: she fired a forehand down the line and came in behind it. But what worked against other opponents wasn’t going to work against this one: Gauff was there in time to send a topspin lob over Boisson’s head and just inside the baseline. Gauff would break serve, hold, break again, and hold again before Boisson knew what hit her.

“She played really great,” a shell-shocked Boisson said. “Like, I don’t know how to say, but she played on the right and on the left and on the right. I just feel like I was running everywhere on the court today, so it was really tough. She was really solid, and I couldn’t play my game today because she was just too good.”

Boisson looked weary from her recent Top 10 upsets, and the heavy forehands that had been going for winners ended up in the net instead. By contrast, Gauff struck her own often-shaky forehand with pace, depth, weight and confidence.

So in the end, Cinderella’s slipper didn’t quite fit Boisson. But her five wins put her on the tennis map, and on all of our radar. She won’t finish the fortnight holding up the most unlikely Grand Slam trophy in history, but she will emerge from it with a ranking that suits her game and her potential.

As for Gauff, she made an early statement by taking the crowd out of the match, and letting her opponent know that she was dealing with a world No. 2. That should be an all-around confidence booster for the final that lays ahead.

“Obviously a lot more work left to do,” she said. “But yeah, I’m going to savor this one and be ready on Saturday.”