Europe 1 with AFP / photo credit: CLIVE BRUNSKILL / GETTY IMAGES EUROPE / Getty Images via AFP 21:46 p.m., June 08, 2023

The world No. 1 and holder of the Iga Swiatek trophy qualified in the early evening for her third final at Roland-Garros by ending in three sets (6-2, 7-6 (9/7)) the course of the Brazilian Beatriz Haddad Maia, 14th in the world, in just over two hours Thursday. She will face in the final this Saturday the surprising Karolina Muchova.

In Saturday's final of Roland Garros, a tournament of which Europe 1 is the official radio, Iga Swiatek will face the unexpected Czech Karolina Muchova (43rd), who fell to world number 2 Aryna Sabalenka in three sets (7-6 (7/5), 6-7 (5/7), 7-5) after saving a match ball earlier in the day. Swiatek's qualification for the final combined with Sabalenka's defeat ensures the 22-year-old Pole remains world number 1 at the end of the Parisian fortnight.

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"It's hard to play such a long tournament"

Swiatek will play the fourth Grand Slam final of his career. It has so far lost none. In addition to Roland-Garros 2022, she won for the first time on the Parisian clay in 2020 and at the US Open in 2022. "It's crazy! It's hard to play such a long tournament," said the world No. 1. Haddad "is left-handed and she played it, she knows how to put a lot of lift but also play flat to be more aggressive. I'm happy to have been solid, especially in the tie break," she added.

Picked cold by a white break at the start of the first set, Swiatek immediately straightened the bar, and more solid, more enterprising and more precise than Haddad in the exchange, she left only one other game in this initial set to her novice opponent in the last four in Grand Slam.

This did not discourage the Brazilian left-hander, who has already repeatedly demonstrated her fighting spirit: she first led 3 games to 1, then once Swiatek came back and both players in the decisive game, she got a ball to tie at a set everywhere, at 6 points to 5. But she did not convert it and the Pole converted her second match ball a few points later.

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The player who has given Swiatek the most trouble since the beginning of the Parisian fortnight

The "ole, ole, ole, ola, Bia, Bia" thrown by the yellow and green spots scattered in the stands of the Central Court, in the colors of the Brazilian flag, not so numerous but very sonorous, were not enough to reverse the logic. Haddad (27) is nevertheless, and by far, the player who has given Swiatek the most trouble since the beginning of the Parisian fortnight. Even if the world No. 1 will go to the final on Saturday without having dropped a set. Swiatek becomes the youngest player to reach her third Roland Garros final since Monica Seles between 1990 and 1992.

The first Brazilian player to reach the last four of Roland-Garros in the Open era (since 1968), Haddad could enter the top 10 on Monday, provided that Muchova does not win the Paris Grand Slam.