Breakout French Open star battled back from | Sports News

Maja Chwalinska has battled back from melancholy to turn out to be the breakout star on the French Open. The unseeded Polish star, 24, has reached the semifinals at Roland-Garros, after battling by way of qualifying, earlier than dropping only one set in the primary draw.

Chwalinska is one of 4 WTA stars left standing, and one of them will likely be topped a first-time Grand Slam winner following Aryna Sabalenka’s shock collapse to Diana Shnaider within the quarterfinals. It’s been fairly a journey for Chwalinska, who, earlier than the 2026 French Open, had solely ever managed to achieve the primary draw of a Slam on two earlier events.

Chwalinska reached the second spherical at Wimbledon in 2022 and waited slightly below three years to make her subsequent fundamental draw look on the 2025 Australian Open. Now, she’s hoping to hitch Great Britain’s Emma Raducanu in an unique membership, as she appears to be like to turn out to be the second-ever tennis participant, each women and men, to win a Slam as an unseeded qualifier.

However, Chwalinska’s journey may’ve been oh-so-different. She stepped away from tennis to battle melancholy at 19. Chwalinska may’ve thrown within the towel and never performed skilled tennis again.

Chwalinska admitted that she “associated tennis with pressure, stress, and crying,” earlier than overcoming her mental health challenges and staging her Great Comeback.

“In 2019 I started to feel bad,” she instructed WTA Tennis in 2022. “First on the court, but after I also started to feel bad off the court, and it led me to depression.

“Something I enjoyed the most suddenly became a source of suffering. I associated tennis with pressure, stress, and crying. I was dealing with that until last year’s Wimbledon, when I decided to take a break.

“I didn’t know that I would come back, to be honest, because things were not fine. There were dark thoughts. It was tough to even leave the house. I didn’t have any desire for anything.”

Maja Chwalinska vs Diana Shnaider

Chwalinska will play Sabalenka’s slayer, Russian tennis star Shnaider, for a place in Saturday’s Women’s Singles closing on Thursday afternoon. The pair have met as soon as earlier than on the W60 Istanbul in 2022.

Shnaider obtained the win, however Chwalinska’s unpredictability stays. Chwalinska has already overwhelmed two ranked opponents at Roland-Garros this yr. She beat Elise Mertens within the second spherical and Anna Kalinskaya within the fourth.

Chwalinska or Shnaider will go on to play one of No. 8 Mirra Andreeva, or Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk. Reflecting on her break from tennis on account of mental health struggles, Chwalinska added, “Well, the break wasn’t very robust. The robust moments have been earlier than the break, I might say.

“I was struggling a lot. You know, I pushed at the beginning. I thought that I just need to stay very strong, tough, and just keep practicing. Yeah, but then I just couldn’t get out of bed anymore.

“I used to be simply, like, lifeless, to be sincere. Yeah, I knew that I needed to take a break as a result of in any other case I’m simply not capable of stay, I believe.

“Yeah, I needed to take a break and I honestly didn’t know if I’m going to come back or not, to be, like, honest with you. Yeah, after, like, months, I decided to come back. I needed to kind of figure a few things in my head, I would say. Yeah. And I came back. I’m happy that I did.”