The Best Thing I Saw at Roland Garros Today: Maja Chwalinska takes artful path into the quarterfinals

Maya Chwalinska could hear the fans in Court Philippe Chatrier starting to stir. Like them, she could feel that their countrywoman, Diane Parry, was making a comeback push. Chwalinska was serving up 6-3, 2-2—agonizingly close to her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, but still so many shots, rallies, and nervous moments away.

On the next point, when Parry sprung to her left and roped a winning forehand to reach break point, the crowd let out a pent-up roar. The 5-foot-5 Chwalinska, whose spinny lefty serve wasn’t going to win her many free points, must have felt like the finish line had just moved a lot farther away.

“This is what they’ve been waiting for,” TNT’s Mary Joe Fernandez said of the French audience.

“She’s so close to finding the formula,” her booth-mate, Mark Petchey, said of Parry.

Instead, it was Chwalinska—pronounced, roughly, “waleenska”—who found her own multi-faceted formula for fighting back and extending her lead.

She saved a break point by hitting high to Parry’s one-handed backhand and drawing a shank. She used her two-handed backhand in inventive ways, to chop hard, curving slices crosscourt and carve out drop shots that landed a foot from the net. She sent her forehands up high and heavy, with plenty of clearance and safety. She changed pace and spin with seemingly every shot. She kept Parry guessing as to where the next ball was going. She cut her errors down to just four in the second set.

Chwalinska quieted the crowd, didn’t lose another game, and sprinted into the quarters with a 6-3, 6-2 victory.

“I know that I’m playing different tennis, than most of the girls on tour," Chwalinska told wtatennis.com over the weekend. “I don’t have the [physicality] to play strong, so I need to develop a different kind of weapons for myself. I definitely played differently, and I think it helps me a lot against these players.”

Whoever I’m playing, I’m lower in the rankings, so it doesn’t matter for me if it’s open or not.

Not that she expected it to work quite this well.

“It’s definitely a big surprise for me,” Chwalinska says of her run. Coming to Paris, she was ranked 114th, and had to qualify for the main draw.

Her success has been so much of a surprise, in fact, that she has “struggled to pay for the hotel” she’s staying in in Paris.

“You guys know we get the check after the tournament.”

Before this past week, Chwalinska may have been best known as a long-time friend, doubles partner, and teammate of her fellow Pole Iga Swiatek. The two have known each other since they were 10. But while Swiatek was rocketing to No. 1 at 20, Chwalinska was increasingly stressed and depressed by life on tour. In 2021, she took a break from the sport, before returning a year later with a new, more self-forgiving mind set.

“I’m not as strict with myself,” she told the WTA when she returned in 2022. “I don’t punish myself. I try to control my monologue. Before, when I hit a bad forehand, I would tell myself, ‘I suck, I really suck.’ Easy things to say, but when you repeat them, it gets really overwhelming.”

Chwalinska likes clay, and has had promising results at 125-level events in 2026. She’s 24-9 on the year, and will break into the Top 100 next week. She chalks up some of her success in Paris to always always being the underdog. She can’t afford to do anything but focus on the task and the opponent in front of her. There’s no “wide open” draw for her, no matter how many seeds fall.

“Whoever I’m playing, I’m lower in the rankings, so it doesn’t matter for me if it’s open or not,” Chwalinska said with a laugh today.

That will be true again on Wednesday, when she faces 24th-ranked Anna Kalinskaya. The two have never met.

Chwalinska, along with tour-mates like Anna Anisimova and Elina Svitolina, who have also come back stronger after breaks, is proof that there are second and third chances in tennis. That no pattern or level of play is set in stone. That there’s potential that may take time, and extra effort, to tap.

“I’m definitely overjoyed. But tomorrow we start preparing for the next round.”