Cleaning out the notebook and Notes app from smashing Roland Garros 2025. First, a reminder that if you want future columns sent directly, DM me your email.
1. Coco Gauff is the kind of global star whose triumphs trigger notes from former presidents. And, still, if her off-court awesomeness is there for all to see, her tennis remains underrated. What a mix of defense (prolonging points) and offense (walloping opportune winners). What poise, that carries her through lapses and enables her to maintain her cool while opponents lose theirs. What versatility that, alone among Americans, clay might legitimately be her best surface. Her women’s singles title puts her on a new plane. And, one senses, the spigot is now officially tapped.
2. The tournament started with a ceremony toasting the heroics of 14-time Roland Garros champion Rafael Nadal. It ended two weeks later with another extraordinary Spaniard, bending time, conventional tennis rules and the ball itself. Carlos Alcaraz defended his title in the most remarkable way possible, staving off three match points, recovering from an 0–2 sets deficit and taking down Jannik Sinner to win his fifth major. Either Sinner or Alcaraz has won the past six majors. The more of this matchup, the better for men’s tennis. But also the better for them, elevating and pushing and forcing innovation—the rivalry multiplier effect.
3. There will not be a men’s Grand Slam winner in 2025 because the player who took the Australian Open title, Sinner, could not close the deal here. In the short term, he will be devastated by this result, coming within a point of winning his first Roland Garros. Big picture: this is his third event of 2025. Despite a lack of match play, for 6.9 rounds in Paris, he played virtually flawless tennis. And he came this close on perhaps his worst surface? Beating Djokovic in the process? Nearly taking down the mighty Alcaraz? This was the 12th “Sin-car-az” match (the Spaniard holds an 8–4 advantage) and they are just warming up.
4. While she may have committed her 71st unforced error Saturday in a less than gracious post-match postmortem, Aryna Sabalenka is a generational talent, a worthy No.1, a future Hall of Fame player. And what a mystifying career. For her first 14 majors, she played see-ball, hit-ball power tennis and failed to get beyond a fourth round. In her last 11 majors, she has gone to the semifinals or better 12 times, remarkable excellence and a remarkable reputational rewrite. And she has three majors to show for it … and also three stinging three-set final losses. Saturday—as she’ll be the first to tell you—she sprayed balls as if operating the T-shirt cannon and lost in three sets. Here’s a coach-up: Go decompress in Mykonos next week. Drink tequila and eat gummy bears, as you vowed to. Then flush this and win Wimbledon. The grass suits your game more than the clay. You have won 10 of your 12 matches there. You will be the favorite. Win that, it will be the ultimate balm to soothe the wound of Paris.
5. Iga Świątek did not win her fourth straight Roland Garros. It’s now been over a year since her last title. She will not be a top-four seed at Wimbledon. And yet, I would argue it was a positive tournament for her. She won five matches including a battle against Elena Rybakina in which she was down 1–6, 0–3. In a semifinal showdown against Sabalenka, she won a set and then endured a player zoning. Put in an athlete cliché, lots of positive takeaways.
6. As Peter Griffin would say enthusiastically: Lois! The winners notwithstanding, the story of the tournament was No. 361 Lois Boisson taking out three seeds and reaching the semifinals. Such a poised player, with a tomahawk missile for a forehand and a lot of flair. She quadrupled her career earnings and breached the top 70. And now she needs a Wimbledon wild card. In the words of the prophets: You can’t have a player reach the semifinals and captivate fans at major X … and then not make the draw for major X+1. If we are going to tolerate wild cards—which fly (wingless) in the face of fairness—this is the ideal context.
7. Novak Djokovic reached the semifinals, fell gamely to Sinner, and then kissed the court. His post-match tableau was dissected Zapruder-like. The informed speculation here: Like Rafael Nadal, he genuinely does not know about his future. Some days he’s more optimistic than others. Wimbledon—where he stands a better shot at success than at Roland Garros, given the demands of the surface—looms large.
And the obligatory: He is beating players—and hanging in there against the best—at 38 years old. This means he was winning majors when most of his opponents were eating applesauce with bibs around their necks.
8. Quite an event for Lorenzo Musetti who continued his torrent 2025 and reached his second major semifinals. He took a set from Alcaraz and was a few points from taking a second. Then he suffered a groin injury, lost 31 of the last 35 points and retired. One hopes he’ll recover for Wimbledon. A brutal physical sport, this tennis …
9. In the doubles, Jasmine Paolini and Sara Errani did what they did last time they were in Paris (the 2024 Olympics) and won the big prize. In the men’s, Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos defeated Joe Salisbury and Neal Skupski in the final, 6–0, 6–7, 7–5. It was both men’s first major title, following five previous runner-up finishes for Granollers and three for Zeballos.
10. For all the pixels and ink and emotional attention devoted to controversies like night matches (not wrongly; see below) we should balance that by acknowledging tennis’s virtues. Here’s a big one: the ability to bounce back, to snap a slump. This season has seen the controversial suspension of the player who’d won the previous two majors. So many headlines are about injuries and mental health, the greedy abomination of 12-day Masters events—and, more generally, the dysfunction that has created a ridiculous calendar. On the first day here, a ceremony honored Nadal and, while it was pitch-perfect, it also underscored that we are in a new era with fewer bankable global stars. And then this event served us dueling No. 1 vs. No. 2 finals, for the first time in over a decade, a resurgent 38-year-old, emergent teens, local feel-good stories and, overall, so many reminders of tennis’s edge and excellence. The sport was in need of a strong, bounceback event. It got one.
11. In the boys’ event, it was Deutschland über Deutschland as Niels McDonald defeated countryman Max Schoenhaus 6–7, 6–0, 6–3. In the girls’, Austria’s Lilli Tagger—who hits a one-handed backhand and is coached by Francesca Schiavone—beat No. 8 seed Hannah Klugman of Britain. As always, Colette Lewis is on the case.
Shoutout to the BBC, which does a wonderful job with the results for the wheelchair events, which hit differently on clay.
12. Errani and Andrea Vavassori won the mixed doubles title, beating the lefty-lefty, Chicago-Chicago team of Taylor Townsend and Evan King. Ironically (or not), Errani and Vavassori were outspokenly critical about the U.S. Open moving the mixed event to qualifiers week.
13. Alexander Zverev’s game resembles his court positioning: Both are in a state of retreat. The No. 3 seed has played meh tennis since losing in the Australian Open final. Against Djokovic, he was too passive, and his lack of strategy was matched by a lack of fight. Zverev is such a contradiction. He might have the biggest wingspan on tour, but doesn’t do much damage at the net. No less than Andre Agassi considers his backhand the best in tennis history, but Zverev will run around it. He has all the appearances and trappings of swagger but is so easily overcome by fear when matches and situations tighten.
14. Apart from the shameful/shameless scheduling, the other big controversy was Musetti’s quarterfinal lapse. He kicked a ball in frustration that struck a lineswoman. Per the rules, he could have (should have?) been defaulted, especially if she’d claimed injury. Never mind the Djokovic 2020 U.S. Open callback. Remember two years ago at Roland Garros, a Japanese doubles player, Miyu Kato, tapped a ball that struck a ballgirl, and, with goading from the opponents, she was disqualified on the spot. In Musetti’s case, he was only given a warning. This was the correct call. Maddenly as these inconsistencies are, do we really want a match to end this way? With a player’s careless, but not ill-intentioned action ending the competition? He should have been fined. He was. He should have felt guilty. He did. Frances Tiafoe should have been annoyed. He was. He should not have actively lobbied to win by default. He did not. The chair should have been accorded discretion to make situation-based decisions. He was and he did. Can we call this an unfortunate situation but one that, ultimately, worked out? We can!
15. Alexander Bublik not only reached the quarterfinals—his first such appearance at a major—but beat, improbably, Alex de Minaur and Jack Draper. Then, as he put it, “the fairytale ended” and, winning 22% of his second serve points, he had little to offer against Sinner. As a reader, no doubt a finance type, put it: “Higher variance leads to a larger probability of a tail occurrence.” Bublik is great fun and great value. Nick Kyrgios without the attendant moral compromises. But, by definition, streaky players seldom sustain their intoxicating results.
16. Though a five seed losing in the fourth round, logically, is an underachievement, it was a successful event for Draper. On his worst surface, he offered a glimpse of his talents and organized tennis. He lost a what-can-you-do-about-it? match to a zoning Bublik. And Wimbledon awaits.
17. I wrote about this the other day, but yet again, the tournament continues to commit an astonishing unforced error, scheduling only men for the night session on Chatrier. When does a responsible steward stand up—and stand up to the streaming television partner—and say, Folks, even if we are worried about a best-of-three blowout, the optics here are awful, and the message sent here is awful. We’re alienating players, and, worse, alienating fans. Let’s get creative. We can add doubles so if there’s a 57-minute blowout, there’s still a show. We can start 30 minutes earlier and put on two women’s matches some nights. We can make a Lenglen night session as well and flip-flop men and women. We even can give women the option of playing best-of-five here. Something. I’m open to ideas. But the status quo is not acceptable. And if Amazon demands only one match—putting us in this untenable position each year—we need to reassess this partnership.
I heard multiple people—men and women—say: In Madrid and Rome, the most marginal men’s match outdrew women’s matches with the best stars. The women’s final ticket was half the price of the men’s. The market has spoken. How can you expect Roland Garros to ignore the reality that women’s tennis is less popular? The response: When women’s matches are excluded from prime time at a major event, this is self-fulfilling. (This excellent piece from Hannah Wilkes makes the case eloquently.) Instead of reacting to “the market,” why not, as we say in tennis, “become aggressive” and disrupt it?
18. It was a smashing tournament for … the drop shot. Which has gone from novelty to an essential tool, a part of tennis strategy that doesn’t only win points but changes positioning and strategy for the entire match. A player without a drop shot in their arsenal is like a novelist with keys missing on their keyboard. It was rare to see more than a few games go by without an attempt. Shoutout to Gill Gross for noting that against Zverev, Djokovic had more drop shots than second serves, 35 compared to 34. Players like Alcaraz, Bublik and Ons Jabeur seldom went a game without an attempt. Long may this continue.
19. It was a strange event for Frances Tiafoe. He looked terrific in Week 1, dropping zero sets, presenting comfortably on the clay, reaching his first quarterfinal at Roland Garros. In a winnable match against Musetti, he battled for 90 minutes. A set apiece and 5–5, Tiafoe played two dreck games. Then, drained of fight, he closed the fourth set 6–2. Afterward, he said: “Yeah, he was just tougher in the winning-ugly department.” Why give that up in one of the bigger matches of your career? You get beat? Sure. But for all the tennis variables, toughness is one thing you control.
20. Optics matter. Maybe the canapés and Bordeaux in the hospitality tent are exquisite. Maybe the French like arriving fashionably late. Maybe the folks paid to be tennis officials are less invested than the common fan. But again and again, the French federation seats went unoccupied. (So much so, as to make the oft-vacant President’s Box at the U.S. Open look as crowded as the Spirit Airlines Group 1 boarding area.) Here’s a typical snapshot.
The problem here: These seats are directly behind the baseline. The upper bowl is packed. However, as long as people at home see unoccupied seats, it makes the matches seem irrelevant.
21. Mirra Andreeva, 18, is so preternaturally mature and precocious that it was jarring to see her act her age in the quarterfinals. Rattled by the French crowd, a nettlesome opponent, and sub-par (at least her par) tennis, she imploded against Boisson. The cliché: They play the match on clay, not on paper. But imagine saying this a week ago. Mirra, you will face the No. 361-ranked player for another slot in the semifinals. And you will not win.
22. Good tournament for Tiafoe … and we have to specify which one. Frances’s twin brother, Franklin, was here working with longtime family friend Hailey Baptiste. Frances was effusive when asked about his brother’s success, speaking poignantly and with candor about his brother stepping out of his shadow. (It’s not easy to be on a Maryland small college tennis roster while your brother is a global superstar in the same sport.)
And let this item double as praise for Baptiste, who had a breakthrough here and—at 24 years old, armed with weapons, now able to get automatic entry—is a stock on the rise.
23. One of the more stirring matches of the tournament, Arthur Fils prevailed in an all my rowdy friends are coming over tonight five-setter against Jaume Munar. Lenglen Court. French crowd. Fils—the highest ranked French player, male or female—was box office in the extreme. Fils struggled. He ripped his shirt. He embraced his understandably emotional father. Then he recovered slowly, learned he had a stress fracture in his back, withdrew, cast doubt on his Wimbledon and … considerable air left the event.
24. Another blow against the tennis-is-precious trope. You’ve heard of hair stylists and massage therapists. This event features a players’ lounge … tattoo parlor? The copiously tatted tournament chief, Gilles Moretton, knows a guy. His name is Alex and he was on the second floor inking up eight to 10 players (and coaches and administrators) each day.
25. Five players who failed to make it out of the first week but impressed nonetheless: the young Elmer Møller and his whipcracker backhand (already a cult shot that caught the eye of Cappy Ruud). More praise is deserved for Victoria Mboko, who has won nearly 50 matches already this year. While he commits crimes against truth in advertising with his surname, 149-pound lefty Matteo Gigante is yet another Italian up-and-comer. American Iva Jovic is the real deal. At Wimbledon, keep an eye on Aussie teen Maya Joint.
26. Shoutout to Federico Gomez, an Argentine who wrote a brutally candid post about his mental health challenges. A lucky loser, he won a round, played well against Cam Norrie, and now, at 28 years old, will enter the top 100.
27. Rybakina’s strange season continues. On the plus side, she reached the fourth round before losing a battle to Świątek, a fine showing for a fine player, especially on this surface. As for the less plus (also known as negative) side, we hear her banned coach, Stefano Vukov, here in Paris, is preparing his appeal, hoping to be “activated” for Wimbledon … and Rybakina is expected to testify in his defense.
28. We all agree (do we not?) that the importance of nationality in tennis has lost heft—brave Daria Kasatkina now plays for Australia; Kazakhstan has granted citizenship (and funding) to so many Russians in exchange for their fealty; so many players live in Monte Carlo for tax reasons. Can the USTA get in the game and actively recruit some players? (Maybe start with Mboko, who was born in Charlotte?)
29. Speaking of the USTA … quite a mid-tournament bombshell that chief Lew Sherr was leaving the joint to take a position as president of business operations for the New York Mets. (From one side of the LIRR tracks to the other. From Arthur Ashe Stadium to the anagrammatic Shea Stadium … or Citi Field as some call it.) Anyway, congrats to Sherr, a measured, honorable guy, who helped elevate tennis. But this leaves the USTA with a major vacancy, 75 or so days out from the U.S. Open.
And note that the USTA has two big openings, Sherr and Stacey Allaster, who is stepping down. WTA Chairman Steve Simon announced plans to retire last month, and ATP CEO Massimo Calvelli announced his departure last spring. That’s a lot of big job vacancies for one sport.
30. Charlie Parker said, study and study and learn everything you can. Then, forget that s--- and play. I thought of that sentiment while watching João Fonseca. He’s such a talent but he either plays on instinct … or has much to learn about tactics.
31. It’s almost become so axiomatic, that it no longer needs acknowledging. But another strong event for college tennis. And not from the usual suspects. Emma Navarro, Diana Shnaider and Peyton Stearns—all seeds—collapsed early. But how about Ben Shelton (Florida), Nuno Borges (Mississippi State), Jacob Fearnley (TCU) and what seems like half the doubles fields.
32. From the boulevard of broken dreams that is the qualifying draw: What do Borna Ćorić, Marin Čilić, Dan Evans, Cristian Garin and Fabio Fognini have in common? Each is a former top-25 player—a major champ in Čilić’s case—who lost in the qualies. (Čilić’s advanced as a lucky loser.) On the women’s side, there was Bianca Andreescu, winning a match 6–0, 6–0 and then losing. And what a rough go of it for the Americans, only one player male or female (Ethan Quinn) making it through to the Big Dance … though he made the most of it by reaching the third round and is a player worth watching.
33. Here’s yet another virtue of tennis: There is no single route to the top and there is no single background. Some players are motivated by desperation and tennis becomes a sort of deliverance from hardship. (The Williams sisters are reflexively cited as an example. I also will never forget Djokovic telling the story of his father and the 10 Deutsche marks.) Others come from extreme privilege, which can also kindle success, insofar as helping to fund training and travel and eliminating any stress of deprivation. This is a long-winded way to note that Fonseca’s father is credited with starting the first private hedge fund in Brazil.
34. Once again, the anti-corruption officials were here, trying to nab courtsiders, surreptitiously streaming matches off their phones and trying to take advantage of small time lapses by laying bets in real time. Again, this isn’t unique to tennis, but so many constituents enjoy the windfall from sports gambling (including media entities) while the players, who actually furnish the action, get so little—besides social media bilge. A wild story: A man fell asleep in the stands alongside a picnic basket. Officials went to wake him and realized there was a phone buried in his basket, streaming the match. (These guys—and inevitably they are men—just get evicted. They violate the ticket policy by recording; they don’t violate French law.)
35. Bravo to the group of tennis agents for banding together and advocating to improve the anti-doping policy via recent sit-downs with the ITIA. Next up: a meeting with WADA. “We want to continue to push the boundaries with WADA, by the ITIA and the tours, to be more considerate of the challenges it takes for a ‘nomadic sport’ as tennis and the fact that our season is 11 months long, longer than any other Olympic Sport ever is.”
36. The calls for an outright ban might be extreme. But wearing a shirt the exact same shade as the tennis ball players are tasked with hitting is a terminally unsporting gesture.
37. The Thursday before the tournament, six top WTA and ATP players—including Gauff, Madison Keys and both No. 1 players, Sinner and Sabalenka—met with representatives from the four majors to discuss more revenue and more voice. Interesting. A) This came with the blessing of both tours. B) It happened on the condition that no player board reps from the tours were present. C) I heard from both sides that the meetings were cordial and productive and another has been planned for Wimbledon. D) This represents a departure from the PTPA flamethrowing lawsuit. E) Ideally for the players, they get the same proportion of revenue and pension/health benefit contributions as they get from Masters 1000 events. Depending on the math, slightly above 20%.
38. This is being driven chiefly by a desire for a more generous split of the revenue pie. But there is also an inevitable sense that the majors are moving toward Saturday starts—wrapping around three weekends, Olympics-style—and the players don’t want to be denied the benefits of this expansion.
39. This marked the final major for not just Richard Gasquet et al., it marked the final major for line judges. One feels for those losing their jobs. But if the goal is accuracy and fairness, you are duty-bound to use the method that offers the best chance of that. Speaking of AI …
40. It is coming for us all, and it’s coming hard. But it still has a ways to go. This is a (redundant) Sally Jenkins must-read, made all the more so, given the plans afoot at The Washington Post. Throughout the tournament, I received press conference transcripts with AI summations. They included:
- After winning against Ugo Humbert, the moderator asks about the key to the match, and Humbert discusses his mental health. And his backhand.
- Denis Shapovalov celebrated a winless season with a dominant performance at the Roland Garros.
- In his press conference after winning against Jake Norrie in the second week of Roland Garros, Cameron Norrie discusses the match against Jake Norrie.
41. A half-baked thought exercise: I overheard a discussion among players comparing the Porsches that the top four seeds receive for playing Stuttgart, and whether the event’s winner gets a second Porsche if she is among those top four seeds. And I’m thinking: Vulgar as it might scan, this is what progress looks like. Women’s tennis went from Billie Jean King and players carpooling to events and going on early morning radio, encouraging fans to come watch them play, to players getting $100,000 cars as inducements for entering a mid-level event. I’m also thinking: We all love the WNBA, but the median salary for the entire season is less than second-round prize money at one major. Why is the WTA so often absent from talk about the current women’s sports boom?
42. Statistical pet peeve: confusing the proportion of rounds played with the proportion of matches played. We’ve already had six matches where a player came back from two sets down. And—get this—we’re only in the third round! Yet, by that point,112 of the draw’s 127 matches are in the books.
43. Another pet peeve: players complaining about the early-morning anti-doping tests. We get it. It’s annoying to get woken up. It’s doubly annoying to get woken up to get blood drawn. But what’s the alternative? You cannot have predictability with anti-doping. If testing were only conducted during business hours, players could adjust doping accordingly. A simple Google search would reveal which banned substances leave the body in a matter of hours. And, besides, the players tested in the morning are the ones indicating that they preferred getting testing in the morning. The simple question: Do you or do you not want a clean sport?
44. Your periodic reminder that exchange rates matter, and perhaps players might want to make currency hedges. A relatively weak dollar means the €78,000 first-round prize money comes close to $90,000. The €2.55-million winner’s check is roughly $2.9 million.
45. This was the first year of Warner Bros./TNT’s television coverage in the U.S., having taken over from Tennis Channel in 2025. Conflict alert: I was part of the team and lack any objectivity. But by accounts, this was, overall, a smashingly successful debut for the new host broadcaster. A different energy and cadence, a fresh approach with less emphasis on matches than on atmosphere and personality. Plus, Andre Agassi met considerable expectations.
46. Is there anything more tennis than the towel grab derby that follows a match? Like the sport itself, it is quirky and endearing and passive-aggressive and perhaps a little small time. Players shake hands after a match and then, as if on some linen-themed game show, scramble to swoop up the gratis towels. Here, we noticed some ballkids who were quick to gather the towels before players could do their swiping. One veteran shared this hack: Stuff one towel in your bag, drape one over your shoulder, put another over your head as you exit the court. Presto, you may have lost the match but you have three pieces of tournament swag.
47. As is always the case, the college team tennis results tend to get lost in the Roland Garros shuffle, perhaps one reason the individuals (with no more automatic U.S. Open wild cards to any American-born winner) are now held earlier in the year. Do note: Wake Forest won the men’s and Georgia won the women’s competition.
48. Roland Garros is—by a wide margin—the smallest major in terms of physical footprint, just 34 acres. Note the proposed expansion of Wimbledon—which would include an 8,000-seat stadium with a roof—would be roughly double the size of the entire French Open facility. The All England Club is giving 27 acres to the local community for a park.
49. With all due respect to Boisson, and the men’s and women’s champions, this is the story of the tournament. Lucas Feron was again working matches here. Read this story by Jonathan Jurejko. Trust me.
50. From the good soldiering department, here’s a non-tennis story on a Vienna Sports Club that thrived until the Nazis came. Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova represent rivalry at its most elevated. Surviving Ohio State premieres June 9 at Tribeca and will be on HBO in June.
FUN COMMUNICATING WITH YOU GUYS … BACK TO THE DAY JOB. WE’LL DO IT AGAIN AT WIMBLEDON.
More French Open on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as 50 Parting Thoughts From the 2025 French Open.