She has been threatening something like this for a while now, Beatriz Haddad Maia.
A year ago, the Brazilian world No 14 won the first tour-level titles of her career in Nottingham and Birmingham. She has since reached a first WTA 1000 final in Toronto, made a debut appearance at the WTA Finals alongside Kazakhstan’s Anna Danilina, and reached the quarter-finals or better in Portoroz, Tokyo, Talinn, Adelaide, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Stuttgart and Rome. Along the way, she has beaten Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Maria Sakkari.
It is a formidable body of work, one that has confirmed the 27-year-old as the finest female player to come out of Brazil since Maria Bueno, who won three Wimbledon titles and four US Open crowns between 1959 and 1966. Yet there has been one glaring hole in her resumé: an inability to compile a grand slam run commensurate with her talent. Improbably, Haddad Maia arrived in Paris having never previously advanced beyond the second round of a major in singles.
It has been a heavy cross to bear for a player regularly mentioned in the same breath as Bueno and Gustavo Kuerten, who won the first of his three titles in Paris in 1997, shortly after Haddad Maia’s first birthday. But the landscape has altered over the past nine days at Roland Garros. On Monday, Haddad Maia survived an epic contest against Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo to become the first Brazilian quarter-finalist in Paris since Bueno in 1968.
In a triumph of industry, self-belief and determination, the 14th seed recovered from a set and a double break down to prevail 6-7 (3-7), 6-3, 7-5 in three hours and 51 minutes. It was the longest tour-level match of the year – eclipsing by 10 minutes the mark set by Haddad Maia and Anhelina Kalinina in Rome last month – and third longest main draw women’s singles match at the French Open in the open era.
“It’s a dream,” said Haddad Maia. “I think since I started to play tennis, me, my family, and everybody from my team, I was dreaming and working very hard for this moment.
“I’m very proud for what I did today, and also the last matches, because I had to fight a lot.”
That is putting it mildly. Haddad Maia recovered from match point down in the previous round against Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova, and this was the third successive match in which she has been extended to a deciding set. To give her achievement some context, it took the Brazilian only 13 minutes less to subdue Sorribes Tormo than Swiatek has spent on court in four matches, although admittedly that statistic is somewhat skewed by Lesia Tsurenko’s retirement with illness just 31 minutes into her fourth-round meeting with the Pole.
Had she been able to convert any of the three match points she held in the ninth game of the decider, Haddad Maia would have been home and hosed almost half an hour earlier.
But Sorribes Tormo, a player of ferocious intensity and competitive appetite, is not noted for making life easy on her opponents. Neither woman had previously made the fourth round of a major and, with so much at stake, a meeting of two of the tour’s most courageous competitors was never likely to be a straightforward affair.
So it proved. After a blistering start by Haddad Maia, Sorribes Tormo chiselled away at a 5-2 first-set deficit, making ball after ball, keeping the Brazilian away from the centre of the court with the spin and penetration of her forehand, revelling in the chance to ensnare her opponent in the kind of physical, mental and emotion marathon that is her forte.
A first set of six breaks culminated with a tiebreak in which Sorribes Tormo won a sequence of brutal, extended rallies. When went on to edge a 10-minute battle to break again at the start of the second set, combining some dazzling defensive play with powerful counterpunching, audacious drop shots and even a brilliant lob volley, the tide looked to be turning decisively in her favour.
That impression deepened when Sorribes Tormo battled to a 12-minute hold before stealing into the net to seize a second break with a drop volley. By this point, the 6ft Haddad Maia was being forced to play most of the rallies from above head height as Sorribes Tormo sought to nullify the power of the Brazilian, who had resolved that attack was the best form of defence, by throwing up looped topspin balls.
But Haddad Maia, who was only 15 years old when she made the first of four visits to the surgeon’s table, is no stranger to adversity. Even as her glances towards her coach, Rafael Paciaroni, became more frequent, so her spirit rose. Stepping inside the baseline, she rediscovered her quality and her conviction, claiming 11 of the next 14 games to move within touching distance of victory.
“Tennis is not 100-metre race, it’s a marathon,” said Haddad Maia. “Especially my matches. I worked very hard since [I was] young, and my mentality is to not give up, always to give one more chance to [myself], even if things are not going the way that I want.
“I think the key today was the discipline, to be calm and to accept that, okay, I was missing. Okay, she was playing better. She changed the game.
“But we are in Roland Garros playing on Suzanne Lenglen, and I will try until the last point. I think the key was to fight today.”
That was never more the case than when Sorribes Tormo fought off three match points against her serve at 3-5 in the decider, the last with an impudent flicked pass that bamboozled Haddad Maia into stabbing the ball long after the Spaniard had shaped to go the way.
It set the scene for a dramatic finale, Sorribes Tormo summoning a final gesture of defiance to break Haddad Maia as she served for the match, only for the Brazilian to reclaim the break and complete the job at the second time of asking. Having blasted her 65th winner of the afternoon, Haddad Maia’s features crumpled with emotion.
“I think the emotions were there for both of us,” said Haddad Maia. “As I said [after] the last match, when we play big matches against big players in big tournaments – we played almost four hours – it’s not only about tennis, it’s a lot of things that come through our minds.
“I was trying to give one more chance for me, because I knew that I was missing a few shots. But I’m very happy and proud that I did not give up and I was trying to push until my limit. I think I deserve it because of that.”
Few would argue. Haddad Maia will now face Ons Jabeur, the seventh seed, with more history on the line as she attempts to become the first Brazilian woman to make the semi-finals since Bueno in 1966. Jabeur saw off Bernarda Pera of the United States 6-3, 6-1.
The winner of that match will face either Swiatek or Coco Gauff, who defeated Slovenia’s Anna Schmiedlova 7-5, 6-2 to set up a repeat of last year’s final.
“Since last year I have been wanting to play [Swiatek], especially at this tournament,” said Gauff. “I’m the type of mentality, if you want to be the best you have to beat the best. I think also if you want to improve, you have to play the best.”
In the men’s draw, Holger Rune will face Casper Ruud in the last eight after edging past Francisco Cerúndolo of Argentina 7-6 (7-3), 3-6, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7). The match was marred by a moment of controversy when the chair umpire, Kader Nouni, failed to spot a double bounce early in the third set as Rune scrambled to hoist up a defensive lob. To the evident irritation of Cerúndolo, the Danish sixth seed failed to own up to the error and went on to break for 3-1.
“When I was hitting the ball, I didn’t know, I just ran for it,” said Rune. “I saw it after the next point on the TV, and I saw it was a double bounce. But the point already happened and [Nouni] called the score.
“So I felt sorry. Sorry for him. Yeah, I mean, then I managed to break him. I held serve. Then after he broke me, it was close again. You know, this is tennis. This is sports. Some umpires, they make mistakes. Some for me; some for him. That’s life.”
Ruud, the fourth seed, defeated Chile’s Nicolás Jarry 7-6 (7-3), 7-5, 7-5 to set up a repeat of last year’s quarter-final against Rune, which ended with a frosty handshake from the Dane. Rune later accused Ruud of screaming in his face in the locker room, a claim the Norwegian denied.