Maja Chwalinska reached the Roland-Garros final having managed a heavy physical load and a cold along the way, the qualifier revealing she had been fighting illness during the closing rounds of her run to Saturday’s title match. The world No. 114, who came through qualifying and has played nine matches in roughly three weeks, said the cold had set in late in the fortnight but was now easing.
“I started feeling worse after the fourth round,” she said with a hoarse voice. “Honestly, today is better than yesterday – I think I’m coming out of it now.” She also played the semi-final with heavy strapping on her left thigh and took a mid-match medical timeout for medication – the physical marks of a fortnight that, by her own admission, has worn on her.
The semi-final against Diana Shnaider was, by her account, the most physically demanding test of the run. She described a first set of sustained, draining baseline exchanges in which neither player could pull clear.
“I don’t think there was any moment where you could see who was better – those games were balanced the whole time,” she said. “We played game for game. It was an extraordinarily tough match.” The rallies, she said, took a toll: “Physically, we played very long rallies. That first set lasted a very long time. So a lot of good tennis – but it cost me a lot physically.”
We eat pizza every day. Like, every day. We’re going to gain so much weight, you guys
Scheduling has added to the demand. Chwalinska noted that the semi-final was the first time in the tournament she had been forced to play on consecutive days without a rest day, having previously been slotted into the earlier matches on the schedule. She framed the change, characteristically, around something she could control – sleep. “I’m glad I got to sleep in today,” she said. “Usually I’d played those first matches, so I’d feel it earlier. Today I had the time for a slow morning, which I really like and appreciate.”
Recovery before the final, she made clear, would be deliberately low-key – and she leaned on her now-familiar refusal to over-dramatise the demands of the moment. “I’m going to sleep, I’m going to drink my tea,” she said, “and maybe I’ll watch something good, because I’m not a tennis freak.”
The three weeks of pizza her coaches insist on, she added with a grin, would also continue: “We eat pizza every day. Like, every day. We’re going to gain so much weight, you guys.” She declined to look further ahead than her own recovery, saving any thoughts on opponent Mirra Andreeva for the morning. “For now I’m not thinking about that – I’ll leave it for tomorrow,” she said. “I just have to play the best I can, and we’ll see how far that’s enough.”