Anna Kalinskaya stumbles at the most beautiful: bitter day for Jannik Sinner's former partner

Anna Kalinskaya’s Parisian dream comes to a halt in the quarterfinals: the Moscow-based tennis player, who in the previous rounds had prevailed over Lois Boisson, Alina Korneeva, Camila Osorio, and Anastasia Potapova, stumbled just a step away from her first semifinal in a Slam tournament, defeated by the surprising Polish Maja Chwalinska, class of 2001, current number 114 on the WTA circuit.

Reaching the quarters remains her best result at the Grand Slam level (the same goal achieved at the Australian Open in 2024), but for Jannik Sinner’s former partner, regrets remain, especially for the tail end of the first set: Kalinskaya, down 1-5, managed to recover until taking the fraction to the tie-break, but there she suddenly shut down, effectively leaving the field open to her opponent, who was able to impose herself 7-6(3), 6-3.

Kalinskaya, in the second game fraction, lost as many as four of the five games on her own serve, thus erasing any chance of success. Applause then for Chwalinska, a 24-year-old from Dabrowa Gornicza, whose best result in the four most important tournaments on the circuit before this Roland Garros was reaching the second round at Wimbledon 2022.

The Polish tennis player, who started from the qualifiers, is the loose cannon of this year’s edition, as far as the women’s tournament is concerned: before now she has never won a tournament on the major circuit (however, she has three trophies lifted at the WTA 125 level in her trophy cabinet), this year she is one step away from a breakthrough despite being well outside the Top 100 at the beginning of the tournament.