2024 Roland Garros Women's Finals

Swiatek vs Paolini :

It is unreal how much progress Paolini has made in the last season. She had never made it past the second round of a major until this year. She was consistently ranked outside the top 50 and would take losses to players below her ranking regularly, but now will move into the top 10 for the first time. It seemed like her lack of a serve and lack of power gave her a very pronounced ceiling, but somehow things have changed. Paolini was always very consistent from the baseline, but this season she’s been automatic. She’s settled into a De Minaur role where she just beats everyone she’s supposed to, and in the matches where she’s projected to lose she seems to compete to her full ability anyway. This year she has wins against Sakkari, Kalinskaya, Jabeur, Garcia, Rybakina, and now she’s into her first major finals after a very impressive performance against Mirra Andreeva.

The semifinals against Andreeva was expected (by me at least) to be a long drawn out baseline affair. Both players are very good defensively, and neither really has a significant edge in power. What ensued was a quality learning experience for Andreeva, but I wonder if her coaches couldn’t have avoided it for her. Paolini didn’t miss much in this match, but she didn’t have to. Andreeva seemed focused early on hitting through her opponent. She had gotten to this point by outlasting her opponents, but here she seemed intent on hitting big. Moonballs, height, dropshots, and pace changes had been a big part of her game, but against Paolini it felt like she didn’t think her opponent would miss. Maybe that was a fair assumption, but supplying all the offense when you’re evenly matched in terms of power and defensive ability just makes things easy on your opponent. Andreeva seemed to punch herself out while Paolini’s task became simple.

Perhaps Paolini wasn’t going to miss and Andreeva just had a bad day, but it felt like Andreeva’s team needed to deliver the message that she wasn’t going to hit past Paolini. To me, Andreeva’s backhand down the line is a great weapon, but it’s the way she’s able to hit it at the end of long rallies that makes it effective. Here, she tried to go for it frequently and from a bit behind the baseline, and it just resulted in errors. If I’m coaching a junior player in a big moment, I’m looking to constantly remind them that they’re there for a reason, and they’re good enough to compete with their opponent, and to outlast them. Maybe they delivered the message, but it feels like playing Paolini you need to be locked in and prepared for the long haul, and for your power/offense to play a role at the end rather than the beginning.

This was a difficult match to navigate in general, since the last one was so close and the moment was big. In the last meeting also, Paolini led 5-2 and Andreeva was able to win that set, so finding herself down 5-2 again must have raised some internal dialogue about “stay the course we’ve been here before” vs “oh F was last time the fluke?” In some ways, I think the Sabalenka match hurt her a bit because of Aryna’s stomach issues. The plot there became about Andreeva finding any decent shot to the open court. If she made Sabalenka run, she profited, and I think some of that mindset carried over into her shot selection against Paolini. I’m especially disappointed she went away from the moonballs because Paolini is (as some of you may have heard the announcers mention 45 times) not that tall. Height is trouble for shorter tennis players, and Paolini reflects pace extremely well as she showed in the Rybakina match.

Once Andreeva got a bit upset at how things were going, the match was over. The expectations are so high for her, and when she wins it just adds on more of them because of the nature of a bracket. The pressure doesn’t end until you’re out of the tournament, and you realize way before the match is over that that impending doom is coming. When things go poorly, we think players should be professional, but I can offer that realizing everyone is watching you and feeling like you’re letting them down is extremely heavy. You almost end up wanting your loved ones to leave so you can just lose in peace. There is plenty of time for Andreeva to grow and learn on tour, I just feel a bit bad that she has to do it publicly. It was a great run followed by a moment that she’ll probably regret until her next great moment. It’ll come, but for now I think we got the right finalist.

Paolini isn’t expected to do much with Swiatek, but that won’t stop her. She can be outrallied here, but “prove it” is the way I’d describe her play. You can beat her, but she’s not going to help you. Her backhand stays low and is hit with good pace, and her forehand can do damage when she gets to move forward on it. She has the same ability to take the forehand up the line early that Tsitsipas had during his early succcess, and her serving is not a weapon but isn’t really costing her a lot. The semifinals against Gauff seemed like the finals, but Gauff imploded in a way that Paolini won’t. I’m not sure the score will be much more competitive, but I think the rallies will be of a higher quality because Paolini’s game and shot selection are very much automatic at this point.

Gauff is one of the best players on tour, but she’s still trying to decide what her game looks like. Since she does so much better than so many players, and is a better and fitter athlete, she gets away with a lot of stuff. Her forehand can break down, and she can make a lot of impatient errors when she tries to end rallies. This is what happened in the second set, and it gave Swiatek a break just as the pressure was building for her. Aiming high is good, and I’d like to see Gauff do it all the time. The mental gas-tank that it takes to constantly find the next offensive shot and misdirect your opponent as well is not something you can just decide on. You need to be working on that stuff in the early rounds and not deviating from it. It’s a no-brainer to make sure you get the win, but Gauff’s appearances at 250s and 500s going forward should really be used as training for her offense (with an almost Bublik style approach). It feels like when Gauff gets upset or motivated, she just starts hitting bigger. No adjustment is needed on her backhand, but her forehand production isn’t ideal and her backswing tends to disappear/get irregular when she’s trying to hit bigger on that side. It’s somethiing I’m sure her team is working on, and her forehand has improved over the last few seasons, but Iga is setting the bar extremely high. Gauff 100% wants to compete at the top level, and continuing to develop her forehand/serve technique is something she needs to do to catch up.

It’s funny that the better Swiatek gets, the less I mention her in her matches. Her stats are absurd at this point. She’s won 21 of her 24 finals, she’s won RG 3 times already, and she’s locked up the #1 ranking for this year and it’s only June. These conditions are perfect for her game and aside from a heroic performance from Osaka, no one is getting close. Now she gets a first time finalist whose game doesn’t contain the weapons (big serve/huge power) that are typically required to beat her. Add in that the candidate with those weapons en masse (Sabalenka) would not have even been favored to win a set against her had she made the finals, and it paints a picture of a player who could potentially be at the top of tennis for a very long time. The buzz is already “can she beat Nadal’s record for RG titles?” and she hasn’t even played the finals yet. Tennis is a sport that has been constantly plagued by huge letdowns and pressure infused upsets, but Iga Swiatek is just plain better than everyone on clay.

As far as the tennis, Swiatek’s approach doesn’t have to change much. She hits bigger off both wings than Paolini, and significantly so. Their previous meetings where at times when Paolini was not at her best, but Swiatek yielded only 3 games in those matches. She serves bigger, has a familiar opponent who is in unfamiliar territory, and she’s in excellent form at her best tournament. Add in that the clay is a little bit slower than usual this fortnight, and it all helps her. Paolini’s speed is the best equalizer for her here. Swiatek is going to dominate rallies, but Jasmine can put the extra ball back over and over and at least probe to see if Swiatek gets impatient. Paolini won’t falter because of the uphill battle, because she is used to that being the case when she gets on the court. There are no expectations for her here, so while there might be nerves, there is no pressure. Any positive result is a good one, and her place on tour and financial situation is assured for at least a few seasons. That’s a big boost for a player, and sometimes it can let their game open up a bit. I do think Paolini will be able to break at least once here, but her serve will be too hard to defend in the long run. Swiatek is zipping players who have majors to their names, and she’s one step away from another well-deserved RG title. Swiatek in 2, with Paolini winning 4-5 games.