On a sunny but temperate afternoon at the Stade Roland Garros in Paris, Poland’s Iga Swiatek breezed to her fourth French Open championship title, defeating 12th seed Jasmine Paolini of Italy 6-2, 6-1. The match was over in just 68 minutes.
With her victory, Swiatek—who entered today’s final on a hot streak, having won 18 consecutive matches on clay and 20 consecutive matches at Roland-Garros—has become only the fourth woman in history, after Chris Evert, Steffi Graff, and Justine Henin, to win the French four times. She also becomes the first woman to win any major three times in a row since Serena Williams’s 2012-2014 run at the US Open.
World number one Swiatek, 23, and Paolini, 28, had played each other twice before—most recently, in the first round of the 2022 US Open—with Swiatek winning both times. “We played a long time ago, so I need to prepare tactically and find out where her game is now,” Swiatek told reporters before the final. And indeed, Paolini had enjoyed a strong tournament in Paris, cruising into her first major final with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Russia’s Mirra Andreeva in the semifinals.
Early in the first set of the final, it seemed like we might have a match: after Swiatek held her opening game, Paolini got up a break, taking a 2-1 lead. But it wasn’t to last; Swiatek would win the next five games, ending that set in just 35 minutes, before proving utterly indomitable in the match’s 30-minute second set.
