But Iga Swiatek was dethroned in humbling fashion at Roland Garros on Thursday, Aryna Sabalenka ending the Polish defending champion’s remarkable 26-match winning run on the Parisian clay with a 7-6 (7-1), 4-6, 6-0 victory as she advanced to the French Open final for the first time. 

Throughout her reign of terror in the French capital, Swiatek has often swept through sets without dropping a single game in a set – the dreaded “bagel”, as it is known in tennis parlance.

Jokes about “Iga’s Bakery” have been plentiful, but for once it was the 24-year-old who had too much on her plate, Sabalenka producing near-perfect tennis to dominate the decider so thoroughly that she dropped just six points and, remarkably, made no unforced errors.

“Six-love, what can I say?” said Sabalenka. “It couldn’t be more perfect than that.” 

Indeed not. It was a brutal exhibition of power tennis from the Belarusian world No 1, who began the afternoon in commanding vein, blasting her way into an early 4-1 lead, and ended it equally emphatically after being drawn into a more protracted battle. Through to a third straight grand slam final, a feat last achieved by Serena Williams in 2016, Sabalenka will face second seed Coco Gauff on Saturday with a fourth major title – and first away from the hard courts she favours – firmly in her sights.

“It’s going to mean everything to me and my team, because I have to say that almost my whole life, I’ve been told the clay court is not my thing, and then I didn’t have any confidence,” said Sabalenka. 

“In the past, I don’t know how many years, we’ve been able to develop my game so much, so I feel really comfortable on this surface and actually enjoy playing on clay.”

It didn’t always look like Sabalenka was having fun, particularly when she was unable to convert points for a 5-1 lead. Determined to take the contest by the scruff of the neck, she achieved that ambition early on with a combination of irresistible serving and deep, bludgeoned returns that landed at Swiatek’s feet almost before she had completed her service motion. On a drizzly day in Paris, the closed roof on Court Philippe Chatrier seemed to play into the 27-year-old’s hands, allowing her free rein to take on her shots unencumbered by the swirling wind outside.

But as Swiatek chiselled her way back into contention, moving inside the baseline, showing greater aggression on the return, and belatedly landing her first serve with greater frequency, Sabalenka made plain her frustration, muttering to herself furiously and casting dark looks towards her team. Swiatek levelled at 4-4 before a late exchange of breaks brought up a tiebreak. The Belarusian bossed the shootout, but now she knew she was in a match.

Though down a set, Swiatek could draw encouragement from the knowledge that she had navigated a similar challenge two rounds earlier against Elena Rybakina, who also set a daunting early pace and used her power to rush the defending champion into error.

It is widely acknowledged that Swiatek is never more vulnerable than when she is denied time, and in that respect Sabalenka, whose success is measured in the milliseconds it takes for her blunderbuss strokes to work their destructive magic, represents the ultimate challenge. But there is a reason Swiatek went into the contest with just two losses from 42 previous appearances at Roland Garros, and in the second set she showed her mettle.

Returning with greater depth and penetration, Swiatek secured an early break with a pair of rifled backhand winners, only to relinquish the advantage immediately with a poor service game.

But when Sabalenka replied in kind, producing an error-strewn game to concede a second break, Swiatek was not about to repeat her mistake. She instead consolidated the advantage with panache, producing a first ace of the afternoon, an exquisite piece of touch on the half-volley, and an extraordinary, lunging drop shot. In the minutes that followed, Swiatek produced her finest tennis of the fortnight and, arguably, her entire, chequered season. 

Without a title since defeating Jasmine Paolini in last year’s final, the four-time champion has slipped from first to fifth in the rankings, and will fall to seventh next week. In recent months, she has suffered losses to Jelena Ostapenko, Mirra Andreeva, Coco Gauff and Danielle Collins, respectively ending title defences in Qatar, Indian Wells, Madrid and Rome.

But as she became bolder in the baseline exchanges, producing some sharp touches at the net and improving markedly on serve – where she won 71% of points behind her first delivery, up from 43% in the first set, and more than doubled her success rate behind the second – there were glimpses of the Swiatek of old. It made Sabalenka’s superiority down the stretch all the more sobering.

“She still served really well, I feel like I served the same and she read my serve much better, so I probably won less points on the return,” said Swiatek. “I think I lost my intensity a bit and she just played pretty strong, as in the first set, but I didn’t react to that well and just couldn’t push back.

“The pace from her was super fast, she for sure, especially at the beginning of the match, played as hard as possible and pretty risky, so it was just hard to get into any rally. [In the second set] I was able to do that, so more things happened, it wasn’t just like serve and one shot, or return and one shot, I could build the rally.  

“In the third set I feel like we came back to what happened in the first, and she for sure used her chances and I didnt really keep up what I was doing in the second set.”

There were no such difficulties for Gauff, who ended the extraordinary run of French wildcard Loïs Boisson, the world No 361. The Frenchwoman, who carried the hopes of a nation after defeating three seeded players en route to the semi-finals including Jessica Pegula, the world No 3, and the sixth-ranked Mirra Andreeva, but struggled to reproduce that form as she slumped to a 6-1, 6-2 defeat. Gauff will now attempt to claim the title that eluded her three years ago, when she was routed by Swiatek in the final. 

“My first final here, I was super nervous, and I kind of wrote myself off before the match even happened,” said Gauff, 21, who defeated Sabalenka to win the 2023 US Open. “Obviously, here, I have a lot more confidence just from playing a grand slam final before and doing well in one.”

Whether that will be enough to stop Sabalenka is another matter.

“It was a big match, and it felt like a final, but I know that the job is not done yet,” said Sabalenka. “I have to go out there on Saturday, and I have to fight and I have to bring my best tennis, and I have to work for that title. 

“I’m ready; I’m ready to go out, and I’m ready to fight. And I’m ready to do everything it’s going to take to get the win.”

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The French world No 361, the breakout star of this Roland Garros, continued her astonishing run with a second top-10 win in three days, defeating the sixth seed Mirra Andreeva, 7-6 (8-6), 6-3, to become the first wildcard in the open era to reach a women’s singles semi-final on the Parisian clay.

On a stage that has seen so many French players freeze down the years, Boisson was once again a revelation, backing up Monday’s epic three-set victory over Jessica Pegula, the world No 3, with another performance full of wit, style and tenacity. 

The 22-year-old’s game is a joyous patchwork of skidding slice and rearing topspin, one moment all artful drop shots and angles, the next a battery of booming serves and big forehands. 

It is a formidable arsenal, one that combines the modern power game with the artistry of a bygone era, and its potency has been magnified by the impassioned support of a crowd yearning to acclaim a homegrown champion for the first time since Mary Pierce conquered Paris a quarter of a century ago. A French Open that began in emotional fashion, with Rafael Nadal, Caroline Garcia and Richard Gasquet all bidding the tournament farewell, may yet conclude in similarly impassioned mood.

If that is to happen, Boisson will first have to get past Coco Gauff, the American second seed, who came from behind to defeat her compatriot Madison Keys 6-7 (6-8), 6-4, 6-1 in the day’s first quarter-final. But for a player making her grand slam debut just months after returning from a torn anterior cruciate ligament that denied her a wildcard appearance at her home slam last year, everything seems possible now.

“It’s really incredible, I’m so happy to be in the semi-final here, and I hope it will continue,” said Boisson, who is projected to rise to 65 in the rankings and is now a prime candidate to receive a wildcard for Wimbledon, for which she is currently 60th on the list of alternates. 

“I don’t really think about what will be next, you know, the ranking, Wimbledon and everything. I just try to stay focused on this tournament now. I really enjoy everything that I live here, on the court and outside the court, so I will see this after. For now, I just have to prepare the match of tomorrow.”

As Andreeva can attest, the same applies in reverse. For all the experience the 18-year-old Russian has accumulated across the course of her brief career, she is unlikely to have encountered a skillset like that possessed by Boisson too often. Unsurprisingly, Andreeva’s coach, the former Wimbledon champion Conchita Martínez, was an interested observer during the Frenchwoman’s dramatic win over Pegula.

It seemed initially that the Spaniard’s scouting would reap dividends for her young charge. Andreeva went about her business with intelligence and purpose, biding her time from the back of the court and refusing to become entangled in Boisson’s intricately woven web of ever-shifting spins and tempo. 

The Russian struck her backhand down the line with devastating potency and was constantly alive to the danger posed by Boisson’s touch, moving forward swiftly to intercept her opponent’s drop shots and dealing with them calmly and clear-headedly once there. 

It was a performance of precocious maturity from the teenager, and it carried her all the way to a set point at 5-3. Boisson fended off the danger with a deliciously angled backhand winner and drew on her defensive skills to save another set point at 5-6 down in the tiebreak, but it was her topspin-heavy forehand that did the bulk of the damage, pushing Andreeva deep into her backhand corner and opening up the court for her to move in and kill off points at the net. 

The Russian was not helped by the Parisian crowd, who were to be found belting out the French national anthem as early as the warm-up, and who cheered every Boisson success as throatily as they hailed Andreeva’s errors. It was a lot for the teenager to cope with but, for all her obvious exasperation, she heeded Martínez’s vocal demands to step inside the baseline and take on anything short, rapidly opening up a 3-0 lead in the second set.

Her inner turmoil remained close to the surface, however, never more obviously than when she slapped her thigh in frustration after failing to return a Boisson drop shot, and slowly her game began to unravel amid a welter of unforced errors. 

On match point, as a final despairing lob from Andreeva drifted wide, Boisson sank to the clay on her back, briefly overcome by emotion as she became the first French player to reach the last four since Marion Bartoli in 2011. She arose covered in red dirt and covered in glory, but her emotional reaction should not be mistaken for satisfaction. As she remarked afterwards, no young player dreams of making a semi-final; more remains to be done.

“I don’t think it’s a miracle,” said ­Boisson. “For sure, I have a little bit of luck also, but I think it’s just the hard work that I put [in] since I started ­playing tennis, and also last year with my rehab and everything, it’s just the result of hard work. Nothing else. 

“I think every kid who plays tennis has the dream to win a slam. More for French players to win Roland Garros. It’s a dream. For sure I will go for the dream, because my dream is to win it, not to be in the semi-final. So I will try to do my best for it.”

Paris expects nothing less.

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