A day after Amélie Mauresmo sparked controversy by suggesting the women’s game has less primetime appeal than the men’s, it was ironic to see the French former world No 1 join Billie Jean King on Court Philippe Chatrier for a celebration marking the 50th anniversary of King’s victory at Roland Garros.
Mauresmo, the French Open tournament director, banked $15m in prize money over the course of her career, earnings that King’s trailblazing work as founder of the WTA, and tireless campaigning for equality, did much to make possible. As Andy Murray has pointed out, Mauresmo, his former coach, has done much for the women’s game and would not deliberately have set out to tarnish its image. Yet neither that consideration, nor Mauresmo’s apology for comments that she says were taken out of context, could alleviate the prevailing sense of awkwardness. It was, to say the least, an ill-timed convergence of champions.
Happily, the presence of Iga Swiatek alongside King offered a reminder that the spirit of social conscience embodied by the great American has not entirely eluded later generations. Swiatek, who donated $50,000 to a mental health charity last year, and recently questioned why some of her tour contemporaries have stopped wearing ribbons in support of Ukraine, has been consistent in her willingness to speak out on issues beyond the cloistered world of tennis.
When King spoke this week of how she used the sport as a platform to make her voice heard, it was hard not to recall similar comments made recently by the Polish world No 1. “For me, the most important thing is using my voice,” said Swiatek, who is working on projects to support people in Ukraine and Poland. “We’re kind of popular, and we have some influence on the people in our countries, so why not use that?”
It will not harm that ambition that Swiatek is through to her second French Open final in three years after prevailing 6-2, 6-1 over Daria Kasatkina, the 20th seed, to extend her winning streak to 34 successive victories, equalling Serena Williams for the second-best run this century. The contest was every bit as one-sided as the scoreline suggests, Swiatek’s crushing power ensuring Kasatkina never had the chance to bring her variety and tactical wit to bear. As the Russian conceded afterwards, the match was effectively over by the fifth game, by which time Swiatek had shaken off the nervy start that saw an early break quickly cancelled out.
“Iga was a little bit nervous at the beginning,” said Kasatkina. “I was 2-0 down, then I was able to get the score tied to 2-2, and I think at this point if I could put the gear up, I think that could make the difference. But she was more stable in this moment, so she corrected better than me. Then she turned the match her side.”
The magnitude of the challenge facing Kasatkina quickly became apparent. Pushed off the baseline by the weight of her opponent’s groundstrokes, the onus was on the 25-year-old to take care of her service games. Consistency was key, but unforced errors cost her that first break and it required a double fault from Swiatek – the Pole’s second of the match – to establish a foothold in the proceedings. Kasatkina nonetheless accepted the proffered gift with aplomb, biding her time from the baseline before sweeping away a lovely wrong-footing forehand. When she then fended off a break point in the next game to draw level, it seemed as though we might have a match on our hands. Instead, Kasatkina won just one more game.
“I feel like my game is getting more and more solid,” said Swiatek, who has dropped only one set over the fortnight and will face Coco Gauff in the final. “I can really loosen up when I get [the] advantage and when I have a break, so that’s great. I feel like I’m playing better every match.”
In Gauff, Swiatek will face a player who shares her sense of responsibility to the wider world. The American 18-year-old, who was beaten by eventual champion Barbora Krejcikova in the quarter-finals last year, reached her first major final with a 6-3, 6-1 win against the unseeded Italian Martina Trevisan. She becomes the youngest grand slam finalist since Maria Sharapova, who won Wimbledon aged 17 in 2004.
Trevisan, who at 28 has enjoyed the best fortnight of her career, brought an abundance of passion to the court but had neither the weaponry nor the consistency to trouble Gauff once the teenager had overcome her early nerves. The Italian won their only previous meeting, which came in 2020 on her Roland Garros debut, and here she sought to force the play from the outset. But she frequently overpressed, particularly with her whippy southpaw forehand, and the abiding image of the match was of the 59th-ranked Florentine working her way into a promising position only to send the ball sailing beyond the baseline.
After a run of five consecutive breaks, the worm turned in the eighth game, when Gauff held for only the second time to lead 5-3. From that point on the American seized control, varying her patterns from the baseline to deny Trevisan rhythm, and as she established a commanding lead the only question that remained was whether she would falter with the end in sight. So much expectation has been heaped on Gauff’s shoulders since her breakthrough run at Wimbledon three years ago, when she came through qualifying as a 15-year-old and defeated five-time champion Venus Williams en route to the fourth round. Would the occasion get to her?
Any doubts were emphatically answered as Gauff conjured three very different winners – a beautifully crafted lob volley, a deft drop shot and an untouchable forehand – before, fittingly, Trevisan sent one final ball long. Perhaps even more impressive than Gauff’s composure down the stretch was the message she scrawled on a TV camera afterwards. “Peace,” wrote the teenager. “End gun violence.”
It was, as she explained afterwards, a reference not only to last month’s attack on a school in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed by a lone gunman, but also to the fatal shooting of four people in an Oklahoma hospital on Wednesday.
“For me, it’s important, just as a person in the world, regardless of [being a tennis player or not,” said Gauff. “I think for me it was just especially important just being in Europe and being where I know people globally around the world are for sure watching.
“Especially in America it’s a problem that’s, frankly, been happening over some years, but obviously now it’s getting more attention. But for me it’s been an issue for years.
“For me, it’s kind of close to home. I had some friends that were a part of the Parkland shooting. I remember watching that whole experience pretty much firsthand, seeing and having friends go through that whole experience. Luckily they were able to make it out of it. I just think it’s crazy, I think I was maybe 14 or 13 when that happened, and still nothing has changed.
“That was just a message for the people back at home to watch, and for people who are all around the world to watch. Hopefully it gets into the heads of people in office to hopefully change things.”
Whatever happens in Saturday’s final, King’s legacy will be in good hands.