Gauff, New Queen of Paris

Paris has a new queen: Coco Gauff. The American, who was not the favourite in the final, triumphed in a beautiful and exhausting match against Aryna Sabalenka (6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-4), extending the Belarusian's curse at Roland Garros.

Gauff, adding a second Grand Slam to her record after the US Open in 2023, overcame a 4-1 40-0 deficit in the first set and pushed it to a tiebreak, where Sabalenka asserted her status as the world's top player with four final points that put her ahead in the final.

In many other scenarios, this hour and a quarter set would have been enough to topple anyone, but Gauff, far from crumbling, stayed in the fight with an unshakeable mentality, destabilising Sabalenka, who was exhausted after the mental effort of going 1-0 up.

In a much faster set, with three service breaks by Gauff, the American pushed it to a third, where Sabalenka could never regain her balance. Gauff's defence wore down the Belarusian, who committed 19 unforced errors in this set—70 in the entire match—and missed the chance to get back in when Gauff, with a mix of nerves and excitement, served for the match at 5-4.

After losing the first match point, Sabalenka had a break point but was too aggressive, and when Gauff had the chance to close it again, there was no mistake. Ten years after Serena Williams' last title, a new American reigns on the red clay of Paris.

"I didn't think I was capable of achieving this," admitted Gauff, who became the youngest player to win two Grand Slams on different surfaces since Maria Sharapova in 2006. Meanwhile, Sabalenka still doesn't know what it's like to win a Grand Slam outside the hard courts of New York and Melbourne. "This is going to hurt a lot," she said during her runner-up speech.