When Maja Chwalinska walked onto the qualifying courts at Roland Garros a fortnight ago, three wins away from even reaching the main draw, a place in the final was not part of any realistic conversation for the world No. 114. Albeit on Thursday evening on the Philippe-Chatrier, she beat 25th seed Diana Shnaider 7-6(4), 6-4, completing one of the most improbable runs in modern Grand Slam history. The tennis world was watching. Within hours, Venus Williams and Patrick McEnroe weighed in.

Venus Williams, speaking on the TNT broadcast, went one step further. She announced that she’d chosen Chwalinska as her favorite and carefully stated her reasons in a witty manner. 

“I have to pick the person who is least likely, because this is the way it is the last two weeks,” Williams said, referencing the chaos that has defined this year’s draw. “I felt so happy to see this moment. She’s come such a long way, and it really is a Cinderella story.”

Patrick McEnroe, the former doubles world No. 1 and now one of the sport’s most prominent voices, was unrestrained in his reaction. “Absolutely incredible. The qualifier from Poland, Maja Chwalinska, is into the Roland Garros final. You just gotta love it. Court craft, feel, guile, guts. Unreal,” he wrote.

Maja Chwalinska, in the 10 days in Paris, has won each of her nine matches, including the qualifying round and the main draw stages, losing only one set to Maria Sakkari in the third round. She had never beaten a top-50 opponent before this tournament. She has now beaten four in a row, Elise Mertens, Sakkari, Anna Kalinskaya and Shnaider, along with Olympic gold medallist Zheng Qinwen in the opening week. 

The historical context is equally extraordinary. She is only the third player in the Open Era to reach her maiden WTA-level final at a Grand Slam, joining Venus Williams at the 1997 US Open and Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Among players making their main-draw debut at the French Open, she is only the third in the Open Era to reach the final on that debut, after Evonne Goolagong in 1971 and Chris Evert in 1973. The company she’s got is a reflection of what she has given in the past two weeks. 

Chwalinska will leave Paris ranked no worse than No. 21 in the world when the new rankings are published on Monday, a jump of more than 90 places from where she started the tournament. Venus Williams called it a Cinderella story. The numbers indicate it’s something more unusual than that. 

Nine Matches in the Legs, One Final to Go

Maja Chwalinska has not only been through a Grand Slam draw, but a Grand Slam draw plus three qualifying rounds before it, in the hottest conditions at Roland Garros in years. She has now won nine straight matches in Paris with almost no rest in between, and has lost only one set in the last two weeks. 

The majority of players who reach the championship game have played six games. Chwalinska will walk out for Saturday’s final, as she has more miles on her legs than anyone else remaining in the draw. It can go either way, playing more games can gain you more experience on the surface, or it can tire you down before the big final. But in her case, even though she has played three more matches than her opponent, she has spent considerably less time, as most of her matches have gone over in straight sets. 

What makes the story richer is where Chwalinska was not so long ago. She revealed in 2021 that she had been experiencing depression for more than 18 months and would be taking an indefinite break from her tennis career. She had reached a point where she associated the sport with pressure, stress, and crying, and could not bring herself to train. “I was struggling a lot. At the beginning, I thought I just needed to stay strong, be tough, and just keep practicing. But eventually I couldn’t get out of bed anymore. I was just lifeless, to be honest,” she said. 

She sat out for four months and came back to the court in 2022 to qualify for her first slam main draw at Wimbledon. The path from that moment to a Roland Garros final is not a straight line; it is a story that has no tidy template. 

Chwalinska joined Iga Swiatek in the junior doubles tournament, winning European titles and progressing to the Australian Open girls’ doubles final in 2017. Since then, Swiatek has captured six Grand Slams, four of which have come at Roland Garros. She went out in the fourth round this year. The player who followed the same path now has one game to make up for the title that Swiatek has established herself by, and on Saturday she will be going up against Mirra Andreeva to try to get there. 

There’s a reason why only one qualifier in the history of the sport has been able to win a Grand Slam. It’s not just about quality of the player at that stage but even the stamina to sustain the number of matches. 

The Polish tennis player will leave Paris ranked no worse than No. 21 in the world, having entered outside the top 100. Now it’s up to the legs that have carried her for nine matches to see if they can last one more and secure one of the most incredible Grand Slams in history.