The second Grand Slam title of the year will be won the Philippe Chatrier Court at Roland Garros on Saturday afternoon when the defending champion Iga Swiatek looks to win the French Open for a third time in succession when she faces Jasmine Paolini.
Swiatek goes in search of a fourth French Open crown in five years in this final and is an emphatic favourite to come out on top whereas Paolini competes in her maiden final at this level and is considered a 10/1 outsider in a two-horse race.
Iga Swiatek
The defending champion Iga Swiatek has gone through the draw largely untroubled this year with the exception of the second round blockbuster against Naomi Osaka where it looked like she would be exiting the tournament. She survived though and has made full use of her second chance and has barely dropped a game since then let alone a set. In four matches since that match she has lost just 14 games and looks as close to unbeatable at the minute as you’re going to find.
Swiatek is getting ahead of players early in sets and piling the pressure on the opponent early and watching the mistakes flow as they go in search of the big shots to finish the points early before Swiatek gets into a rhythm and dominates them. When you factor into the equation that the Pole has been in this position a number of times and come out on top it is pretty easy to see why she is so heavily expected to win this final.
Jasmine Paolini
This has been the best fortnight in the career of the Italian star Jasmine Paolini. She has become the third Italian woman to reach the final of this tournament and she could yet run away with two pieces of silverware because she will compete in the women’s doubles final over the weekend as well. Paolini will have to be wary of nerves which I’m sure will be rife in this match but she came through one match she wasn’t expected to win earlier in the competition when she saw off Elena Rybakina which will give her some confidence here.
Paolini has had to come through three deciding set matches on her way to this final so we know that the Italian has got all the battling qualities needed to get the job done here but she will know that her record against Swiatek leaves a lot to be desired. The positive for Paolini is that she is playing her best tennis in the modern day so she can forget about the past. This is a huge occasion for the Italian but one you would imagine she’ll go after, even if it doesn’t end the way she wants it to.
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Head-to-head
These two ladies have met on two previous occasions and Iga Swiatek has won both of them without dropping a set. The fans of the Italian probably won’t want to know that Paolini has only won six games in the four sets they have played which represents the size of the daunting task ahead of her here. One of those wins was on clay with the other on a hard court. That hard court meeting was at the US Open in 2022 so they have played at a Grand Slam. This will be the first time they have met in a final.
Betting
It is really hard to see anything but a comfortable win for Iga Swiatek here. If Marketa Vondrousova and Coco Gauff couldn’t land any meaningful blow on the world number one with their status in the game it is hard to see how a newcomer to this stage of a Grand Slam is going to make much of an impression. I guess the one thing that Jasmine Paolini has over those two is fewer battle scars against the Pole but she is going to need more than that to come out on top here.
Clearly we’re not going to get rich backing Swiatek so we are going to need to think of another way in for this final and I think it comes in the form of under 17.5 games. Karolina Muchova really took the game to Swiatek in the final last year and got it into a third set but Sofia Kenin and Coco Gauff in the two other finals the Pole has won came out on top in five games and four respectively. Those are more like the finals I expect to see here. The way Swiatek is playing I expect her to make it three wins over the Italian and a third win with less than 17.5 games in it.
Tips
Back Under 17.5 games for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with Unibet
