There is something magical about sports when they stop being about rankings and start being about people. Three weeks ago at Roland Garros, Cathy and I stumbled onto a first-round qualifying match involving a little-known Polish player named Maja Chwalińska. At the time, she was just another name buried deep in the draw. World No. 114, fighting through qualifying. Virtually unknown outside serious tennis circles. We decided then and there, Maja was our girl.
Now? Nine straight wins later, she is into the French Open final. Nine!
That has never happened before at Roland Garros. And in the entire Open era of Grand Slam tennis, only one other player has ever gone from qualifier to finalist. (Emma Raducanu won the 2021 US Open, coming through the qualifiers.) That’s the thing about sports. Every now and then they remind us why we watch in the first place.
The reporting around Chwalińska’s run almost reads like fiction. At the start of the tournament, she barely had enough money in her account to cover her hotel bill. A few rounds later, she publicly appealed for sponsorship help. Today, she has earned more than £1.2 million – nearly doubling her career prize money in one fortnight in Paris.
But the money isn’t really the story. The story is resilience. A few years ago, Chwalińska nearly walked away from tennis altogether because of mental health struggles. Her identity in the sport had largely been tied to being a childhood friend and doubles partner of Iga Świątek. Helpful context perhaps, but not exactly the foundation for building your own sporting legacy.
Now she has one. And she built it not with overwhelming power, but with variation, creativity, touch, patience, and nerve. Reporters described her slices “like a Swiss Army knife,” disrupting and dismantling opponents who hit the ball much harder than she does.
There’s a lesson in that. In a world obsessed with force, speed, scale, and volume, sometimes the differentiator is feel. Craft. Timing. Variety. The ability to stay composed while everyone else is swinging harder.
Watching Chwalińska over these past three weeks has also been a reminder that we often arrive too late to people’s stories. We see the breakthrough without seeing the years of uncertainty underneath it. We see Centre Court without seeing the lonely practice courts, the doubts, the near exits, the empty bank account, the moments where continuing no longer seemed rational. And then somehow, they continue anyway. That’s why underdog stories endure.
Deep down, most of us know what it feels like to question ourselves. To wonder if our best chance has already passed. To feel overlooked in rooms that celebrate shinier resumes and bigger reputations. Then somebody like Maja Chwalińska walks onto the clay in Paris and reminds us that life still has room for astonishing turns.
Sports can still surprise us. And maybe that’s enough reason to keep showing up ourselves.
