Mirra Andreeva’s French Open title adds another seat to WTA Tour’s top table

PARIS — At the past six Grand Slams, there have been six different women’s champions.

That’s not abnormal on the WTA Tour. It also happened between 2019 and 2020, and between the end of 2016 and the start of 2018.

The difference between now and then is that four of those six major winners are established stars in the women’s tennis firmament. Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek, Elena Rybakina and Coco Gauff are all multiple Grand Slam champions, and Sabalenka and Świątek have spent long periods as world No. 1.

But since January 2025, no one has doubled up. Instead, they have been joined on the winner’s podium by Madison Keys, at that year’s Australian Open, and by Mirra Andreeva, who won her first Grand Slam singles title at the French Open Saturday.

Some of the names in the older sequences, like Jeļena Ostapenko (2017 French Open) and Sloane Stephens (2017 U.S. Open), were unseeded surprise packages. Keys, by contrast, had long been hailed as a future major champion, even though she has not been a factor late at majors since. Andreeva, 19, is ready to stay among the elite.

“I’m already thinking of how I’m going to prepare for the grass season,” Andreeva said in a news conference after her 6-3, 6-2 win over Polish qualifier Maja Chwalińska. “I feel like this thing is a little bit addicting, and I really want to do my best to experience all of this for the second time.”

Her coach, Conchita Martínez, added in a news conference afterward that “the sky is the limit” for Andreeva.

“It’s for her to improve and to get better. Then bigger things are coming.”

That would leave five established stars at the top of the sport, all vying to exert some sort of dominance at the majors that has proven elusive as of late. Throw in the other three players in the world’s top eight as of Monday’s rankings — Jessica Pegula and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S., and Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina — and the suite of genuine contenders gets larger.

Anisimova was a Wimbledon runner-up last year, while Pegula has reached the final and semifinals in the past two U.S. Opens. Svitolina has been one of the most consistent players on the tour all season, and has been a semifinalist at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.

This year’s French Open has also established Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk, who will be ranked No. 12 on Monday, as a legitimate contender. Perhaps the same will be true of Chwalińska, who reached the final as a qualifier ranked No. 114, and of Diana Shnaider, the No. 25 seed who knocked out Sabalenka.

Then there are the players in Andreeva’s generation, such as Iva Jović, 18, and Victoria Mboko, 19. The American and Canadian are improving at a steady rate, and have already shown themselves capable of going deep at either the Grand Slam or WTA 1000 level, the rung below. Mboko even won the Canadian Open last year as a wild card. Naomi Osaka and Zheng Qinwen, two players at very different stages of their careers, could rediscover the top level that made the former a multiple Grand Slam winner and the latter an Olympic champion.

Andreeva’s first major adds a layer of intrigue to an already crowded top table. Andreeva has long been a feared talent on the WTA Tour — she reached the Wimbledon fourth round at just 16 — but she has tended to not produce her best at the majors. Over the past couple of weeks, Andreeva has shown remarkable composure and poise to drop just one set on the way to lifting the Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen.

Heading into grass season, Sabalenka remains the player most likely to stamp her authority at the majors. But despite her remarkable consistency in reaching the latter stages, the 28-year-old is 4-4 in Grand Slam finals and retains a propensity to implode as the finishing line comes into view, as she did Wednesday against Shnaider in the Roland Garros quarterfinals. Sabalenka has entered the past six Slams as the top player in the world, but has emerged with one trophy.

Świątek, 25, has now gone two straight seasons without winning a single clay-court title. That would have been unthinkable the last time she won a clay event: her third straight French Open, and fourth overall, in June 2024. Instead, she glided to a first Wimbledon title last July, having come into the tournament out of form and never previously going beyond the quarterfinals.

Apart from when she won January’s Australian Open, Rybakina last got beyond the fourth round of a major at Wimbledon 2024. Gauff, 22, has a backhand, court coverage and competitive will that can beat anyone, but her weaknesses on her forehand mean she is always vulnerable to an early upset.

Andreeva’s presence in the mix could add more chaos rather than less, given that, at 19, it would be unrealistic to expect a level of consistency from her that has proved beyond her much more experienced rivals. The WTA Tour heads into the second half of 2026 in the sweet spot of sporting competitiveness. There is not so much unpredictability as there is a lack of established stars, but also not so much domination from one or two players that the latter stages of tournaments lack intrigue.

For the rest of the year, one of the previous six major winners will look to establish some order, while the chasing pack tries to find a lucky number seven.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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