By: Brayden Yin

The final round of the Women’s Singles in the French Open tournament began last week. In the final match, two very strong players will meet on the clay court for the Grand Slam title.

Karolina Muchova and Iga Świątek will play each other now that Muchova upset Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals after winning two out of the three sets. After recovering from a series of injuries, she returned to the French Open ranked #43 worldwide; she asserted herself in the first rounds of the tournament, defeating the eighth seed, Maria Sakkari.

Muchova has long been a supremely strong tennis player, and she has made it to the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2019 and the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2021. Tennis fans have long admired her balanced form, and her repertoire is envied around the world.

By her late teens, she was struggling against injuries arising from her growth spurts. While she was recovering from injuries, she dropped from #19 in the world rankings to #246. But by the beginning of the French Open this year, she was back to full strength.

Iga Świątek is currently ranked 1 in the world for women’s tennis. She won her first Grand Slam title when she was 19, and now, at 22 years old, she has already won four Grand Slam tournaments. She advanced to the #1 spot in the rankings after the world’s previous #1 player, Ashley Barty, unexpectedly retired.

While she used to play with varied style similar to that of Muchova, she abandoned it to employ a highly effective strategy: taking every opportunity to blast forehands and moonball lobs that land inches away from the baseline.

This match between two of the strongest players in the WTA will be a tight one, anticipated by tennis fans all around the world.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/sports/tennis/french-open-women-swiatek-muchova.html