Today we discovered who will be playing in Saturday’s Ladies Singles Final.
Although she won this season’s Australian Open, Kenin has never previously made it to a clay-court quarter final prior to her victories here in Paris.
Even more remarkably in her only warm up tournament on clay for the French Open in Rome last month, she was soundly thrashed 6-0, 6-0 by Vika Azarenka in the first round.
That was her only defeat of the year, and she arrives in Saturday’s final with a 16-1 record in 2020.
The 21-year-old Muscovite has already won US$3.3 million in prize money this year alone, and she will earn at least another US$1 million from tomorrow’s final.
Meanwhile 19-year-old Pole Iga Swiatek has yet to win a tour title at any level. In fact she’s never been past the fourth round in any major tournament.
When she takes to the court for Saturday’s final Iga will be listening to Guns N’ Roses in headphones for inspiration.
Whilst not a household name yet, Iga did win the 2018 Wimbledon junior singles title and that could all change come Saturday as she is in the Women’s Doubles semi-final too.
Sport runs in the Swiatek family as father Tomasz was an Olympic rower in Seoul 1988.
Having only recently graduated from high school Swiatek recently said that she intended to treat 2020 as a gap year and see if she’d prefer to totally commit to WTA events or go to university. I think her performance here in Paris the last two weeks might just have helped her to make up her mind?
And finally here’s a few images of this most unusual 2020 French Open.
- Novak Djokovic plays Pablo Carreno Busta in front of a few hundred spectators.
- Courts 4,5 and 6 at night after rain.
- Selfie time. Me and my shadow, and a ball kid too.
- Remains of a €95 euros “Happy Hour “in the rain.
- One of dozens of new International TV Studios.
