Roland Garros women's final preview: Iga Swiatek vs. Jasmine Paolini

Iga Swiatek vs. Jasmine Paolini

One of them you expected. The other, depending on how much you follow tennis outside of the Grand Slams, you may have never heard of.

Paolini turned pro in 2011, but before this year she had never been past the second round at a major. She only made it out of qualifying and into her first main draw at a Slam in 2019, when she was already 23. But the 5'4" native of Tuscany—Paolini’s mother, Jacqueline, is of Polish, Danish, and Ghanaian descent—has had a career year in 2024. She reached the round of 16 at the Australian Open, and won the WTA 1000 event in Dubai.

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“It’s a great feeling to be in a Grand Slam final,” Paolini said with a grin after beating Mirra Andreeva in the semis on Thursday. “I don’t know. It seems something impossible, you know, but it’s true.”

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With her fast feet and smoothly-struck, surprisingly-powerful topspin forehand, Paolini has always been a good watch. But even as she improved, she seemed to have a ceiling. At her height, it was a literal uphill battle to stay with the WTA’s bigger hitters. But she’s a natural on clay, and she met one those big hitters, Elena Rybakina, on an off day in the quarterfinals in Paris.

Now she’ll need to take her game to an even higher level. Is that possible? Or is a blowout inevitable? On paper, this would seem to be one-way traffic. Swiatek is No. 1 in the world and 34-2 at Roland Garros, and she’ll have five inches on her rookie-finalist opponent.

“My goal is to step on court Saturday and try to enjoy the match and to enjoy that moment and to try to play a good match and to make a good performance on court,” Paolini says.

Hopefully she also believes she can win. She should. Swiatek will bring experience, confidence, superior firepower, and a kick serve and topspin ground strokes that may force Paolini to hit the ball from above her shoulder. But against Rybakina, who is also an attacking player—and who beat Swiatek a few weeks ago in Stuttgart—Paolini was able to counter-punch with her own loose, versatile baseline attack. She’s a speedster, but she’s also a shot-maker who is adept at offense and defense, topspin and slice. While Swiatek is 2-0 against her, they haven’t played since 2022.

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“We played a long time ago,” Swiatek says, “so I need to prepare tactically and see what her game is at now, because for sure she’s playing—she has [had] the best season, so she must have changed something.”

In the 2023 final, Swiatek faced another neophyte in Karolina Muchova, who ended up giving her a three-set run. Paolini has a chance to do the same. If she can turn the rallies into scrappy, up-and-back affairs, her instincts and court sense could allow her to thrive. But I don’t think they’ll allow her to win. Winner: Swiatek