Mirra Andreeva’s first French Open title arrived with the kind of certainty she spent years trying to build—after meltdowns, pressure failures, and a long stretch of growing pains. In Paris on Saturday, she beat Maja Chwalińska 6-3, 6-2 to lift the Coupe Suzan
PARIS — When Mirra Andreeva finally walked onto Court Philippe-Chatrier to lift the Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen, the moment carried a weight she’d felt for years, even before it looked like it might happen.
Saturday’s final didn’t turn into a slow, ceremonial takeover. It turned into something sharper: 6-3. 6-2 against Maja Chwalińska. a 24-year-old trying to become the first qualifier to win the title at Roland Garros in the Open Era. Andreeva didn’t just win. She controlled the tempo, absorbed the obstacles, and kept the match from ever finding a second life.
Afterward. she used her trophy speech the way she has always used her tennis—directly. personally. and with an unusual focus on inner work. “I also want to thank myself. for believing in myself and always giving my 100 percent even when it’s tough. ” she said on Court Philippe-Chatrier. “Only I know how tough it was for me.”.
Chwalińska was the last obstacle on paper. but in practice she was the person responsible for much of the French Open’s unpredictability. Starting the qualifying tournament as world No. 114, she played her first main-draw round against Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen. Even her appearance reflected the odds she was chasing: she wore a logo-free solid gray top because she had no clothing sponsor.
On court, her left-handed combinations of spins and height and her drop shots beguiled foe after foe. No one could get the ball past her. No one could win the cat-and-mouse duels she imposed on every match. Chwalińska’s run became the symbol of a tournament “busted wide open. ” where depth causes danger from the moment the first balls fly—and where the big favorites repeatedly missed their chances to seize the moment.
Andreeva’s win restored a kind of order. but it arrived with a twist that immediately changed the shape of the tour. She is the first teenager to win a Grand Slam title since Coco Gauff won the 2023 U.S. Open. Her victory also puts her among a tight group ranked between world No. 3 and No. 7, chasing the No. 2 and No. 1 of Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka.
For Andreeva, though, it has never been the kind of success that simply lands when you’re ready. Her path has been a long negotiation with doubt and pressure—fueled by belief that always had to fight its way through her own volatility.
Even before her 20th birthday, winning a Grand Slam title has long been a matter of when, rather than if. The tension between fate and effort was there in the trophy ceremony itself, when Chwalińska joked from the stage, “You are so young and talented, it’s so annoying.”
It also goes back farther than tennis headlines. Her mother. Raisa. fell in love with tennis 21 years ago in Siberia while watching Marat Safin defeat Lleyton Hewitt in the Australian Open final. Mirra’s older sister, Erika, was an infant when the family began shaping its life around the sport. Mirra was still more than two years away from her first breath.
By the time the girls were toddlers. they were being toted to tennis lessons. then to Sochi for better coaching. then to France for academy training. Roughly a dozen years later, the Andreeva family had two teenage tennis pros on their hands. The younger one moved faster—the version of Andreeva that appeared to be headed toward the top.
Her rise looked inevitable two years ago when she began working with Conchita Martínez. The Spanish teen phenom of four decades ago was the coach who would manage Andreeva’s talent and variety. her unique combinations of touch and power. and help her find the right balance between a diamond conviction to win and a tendency to blow a fuse when games. sets. or matches don’t go her way.
From her first months on the tour, Andreeva showed she could burn too hot. She let anger and frustration and perfectionism get the better of her. She was lucky not to get defaulted during her first shot at the French Open main draw, when she fired a ball into a crowd.
At last year’s Roland Garros. she drowned in a cacophony of boos as she tried to survive a filleting at the hands of hometown favorite Loïs Boisson. Through last fall and this winter. she kept succumbing to tears at tough moments in matches—sometimes in tight moments in big ones. sometimes in innocuous moments in small ones.
There were sharp reminders in her winning moments, too—especially whenever she was supposed to be the favorite. In March. she walked on to Stadium 1 at Indian Wells in the California Desert to defend her BNP Paribas Open title. She walked off cursing at the crowd with fury and futility after the pressure of being the favorite sent her spiraling to a defeat against Kateřina Siniaková of the Czech Republic.
Then. a month ago at her favorite Madrid Open. she lost a 5-1 third-set lead against Hungary’s Anna Bondár. Sitting with her towel. telling Martínez and the rest of the tennis world watching that she was not a champion. that she would choke. and that she would lose—she did not get the script she feared. Instead, she won.
Madrid did not bring a title, but it brought clarity.
Since that “ugly day. ” Andreeva has kept reminding herself of the words of her psychologist. who told her that everyone gets to decide what kind of player and person they are on the tennis court. In her post-final news conference. she said she decided to “choose to be a fighter.” She also started binging Roger Federer matches. watching how he carried himself and almost always kept his cool. After her semifinal win in Paris. Andreeva said her concentration and visualization work—also with her psychologist—had allowed her to see the hairs on the tennis ball as she hit it.
But readiness is not a guarantee in modern women’s tennis. She arrived at the French Open as a player capable of making a deep run. while lately Grand Slam titles had largely belonged to the best of the best—the people who had already won them before. Iga Świątek, Gauff, Rybakina, and Sabalenka were the names that always sat near the surface of any prediction.
This year, the tournament didn’t follow the expected ladder. Rybakina, the Australian Open champion, fell in the second round. Gauff, trying to defend her title, lost in the third. Świątek, the four-time French Open winner and Wimbledon champion, lost in the fourth. Sabalenka, the U.S. Open champion and world No. 1, got bounced in the quarters.
Entering the semifinals. Andreeva was the only top-10 player left and seemingly the favorite—a role that has not always suited her under bright lights. Her losses over the past year had come earlier than they were supposed to. often at the hands of lower-ranked opponents. The question entering the last week was simple: could she handle being the player to beat?.
She could. In the semifinals, she glided past a tight Marta Kostyuk. Then in the final, she came out tentatively, feeling out the texture of Chwalińska’s game, which was “so out-of-keeping with the top of women’s tennis in 2026.”
The first set didn’t turn into chaos. It turned into chess with momentum swings. Andreeva lost her serve twice before holding it to draw even at 3-3. At 30-30 in the next game, Chwalińska wobbled—sending an open forehand long and slicing a backhand into the net.
In her news conference, Chwalińska said Andreeva handled the windy conditions and her nerves far better than she did. Chwalińska also said she had been so stressed by her storybook run that she had barely eaten the past three weeks.
“People are expecting we’re going to be acting like adults and we’re just kids,” Chwalińska said.
With gifts like those—pressure, expectation, and fatigue—Andreeva took off. By the time Chwalińska found her footing again. Andreeva was up 2-0 in the second set and on her way. Andreeva played too loose while trying to serve out the championship at 6-3. 5-1. but she wasn’t going to let it slip away.
She jumped ahead as Chwalińska started serving, cracked a short, crosscourt backhand into the corner on her first match point, and sank to her knees in elation.
There was no mistaking what it meant. The group of players one must get through to win a Grand Slam grew by one on Saturday. Add Mirra Andreeva’s name to the list—and don’t plan on crossing it out anytime soon.
Mirra Andreeva French Open Roland Garros Maja Chwalińska Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen women’s tennis Grand Slam winners Conchita Martínez Chwalińska qualifier