On a windy Saturday afternoon in Paris, the roof over Court Philippe-Chatrier was open ahead of the ladies’ singles final at the 2025 French Open. Duelling for the championship? World number one Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and world number two Coco Gauff of the US—marking the first time the top two women’s players had faced off for the title at Roland-Garros since 2013. The victor? Gauff, 6-7, 6-2, 6-4, representing her second Grand Slam win—and the first time an American woman had won the French since Serena Williams did it in 2015.
After squaring off 10 times and dividing the wins equally between them—while it was Gauff who pulled ahead at the 2023 US Open, Sabalenka had won three of their last four contests—expectations for the match were high, and they were met. Both are exceptionally powerful players: Sabalenka an offensive powerhouse, and Gauff a quicksilver defender. And in the first set, they were able to put their dazzling gifts on display, battling it out over a string of wild rallies (one of which demanded a tweener from Sabalenka). It was also a set that underscored just what kind of mettle Gauff was made of, as she fought back from a 2–4 deficit to finally force a tiebreak—even if it was Sabalenka who ended up winning the set.
Then came a bit of a shift: the second set all but flew by as Gauff met Sabalenka’s brute force and fiery bursts of emotion (at one point, she flung her racket at the net, only narrowly missing a ballkid) with total precision and cool. The last time that Gauff made it to the French Open final, she was flattened in straight sets by Iga Swiatek; this time, she proved indomitable. After marching through the second and then third set, the result seemed all but inevitable—and still the crowd, which included Spike and Tonya Lewis Lee, Omar Sy, Dustin Hoffman, and Gauff’s adorable parents, leapt to their feet as Gauff dropped to the clay.