Youngest female French Open champion over 30 years

in #russia9 days ago

It's been a rather lackluster French Open from a fan's point of view on the men's side of things which, not trying to be sexist or anything here, is the main reason why people tune in to these things.

With Alcaraz not even playing, Djokovic getting ousted early, Medvedev being eliminated in the first round, and Sinner getting upset as well, virtually all the people that people tune in to play were gone before things even started to get interesting.

The women's side of things had their own upsets with world number 1 and favorite to win the entire thing Aryna Sabalenka was upset by a top-25 player as well. The women's tournament isn't something that I would normally watch unless it just happened to be on during the same day as the men's, but I did catch a bit of it yesterday.


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This was a very on sided final with Mirra Andreeva taking 10 games straight at 3-2 in the first set and by the time she took her 10th, it was 6-3 for the first set and now 6-0 for the 2nd. Her opponent Maja Chwalińska did scrape together a few games in the 2nd set, but almost nobody ever comes back when down 6-0 in a set. Many people don't even try at that point.


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Something kind of funny is happening in the press right now though as certain news sites are outright refusing to name the country that Andreeva come from because it is Russia. They will fall over themselves to talk about how Maja is from Poland, but they use very tricky wording to avoid mentioning the word Russia. It's all so tiresome.

Well here's the scoop, Andreeva is 19 years old and is a tennis prodigy. She is currently the world number 8 and this is her first major tournament victory. She is the youngest French Open women's champion since 1992 when Monica Seles won it at the same age.

It is customary to play the national anthem of the person who wins the French Open but continuing with their childishness, it was not played in her case.

I did like how gracious Maja was in defeat and she said the following during the award presentation.

You're so young and talented, it's so annoying,I wish the crowd could see a better match today, but Mirra was just so good for me, so I guess it's her fault. I tried my best, I'm sorry."

It wasn't really an exciting match and didn't have the sort of tense moments where it was looking like any person could pull off something spectacular at any point Andreeva basically dominated from the 4th game onwards.

There is good news for Maja though, this runner-up victory of sorts will jump her from world ranking 112 or so to number 21. With this boost she will gain access to better tournaments, better money, better everything really. She just needs to continue to perform on this level in the future. Of course the fact that 4 of the "best" women players not making it to the final makes it a lot more likely that these two were going to be here in the first place.


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Now in the men's final we have a rather humorous situation where Alexander Zverev is playing Flavio Cobolli and I had to look up who Cobolli even is. Flavio didn't have to even play a semi-final because his opponent dropped out with a sickness. That sucks.

It is quite easy to speculate that neither one of these guys would be here if it wasn't for some many of the top talents crashing out to lessor opponents but that's the way the game works every now and then. Zverev is one of those guys that had he been around in a different time he would probably be regarded as one of the best, but when you are surrounded by so much talent the 2nd tier guys don't get near as much recognition in the majors.

I likely won't even watch the men's final. It just doesn't interest me. If it is on when I am somewhere i'll glance at it I guess.

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