Sure there's plenty of disappointment and sadness as well but mainly I just feel proud.
Iga somehow defied the odds when everyone (including myself at times) completely wrote her off.
She came into Roland Garros without a single final or title and no real form for the first time in years, and yet she still made the semi-finals. That in itself shows what a great talent she is.
She also did it having a much tougher draw then the top 2 players currently on the WTA, and a poor showing at both lead up tournaments of Marid and Rome (all of which she was of course the defending champion).
Despite all that she came into Paris a week and a half early and trained and completely turned around her mind set and got back into the 2nd week of her favourite Slam. Not many players would have been able to do that.
And despite the extremely tough loss I'm so impressed with the way Iga fought in those first 2 sets, under the roof.
Conditions which were more favourable to her big serving opponent.
Many have been calling the third set a collapse (given she lost it 6-0).
But again Iga came into this tournament with very low confidence, not having reached 1 final this year and she still give the current world #1 Aryna Sabalenka a bigger fight then the rest of the opponents in her draw.
She give it her all as she always does.
That last set in my opinion is the result of low confidence, lack of finals and titles, perhaps a little bit of lack of belief. All things a player needs to win with the best.
Part of me will always be wondering how this match would have gone had the roof been open, because it does change the conditions quite a bit. And for those 2 sets Iga was going toe to toe with Aryna.
3 years, 11 months 27 days and 4 Roland-Garros titles later the astounding 26 match win streak comes to an end.
But what a ride it was!.
Another one for the tennis history books, a run that will not soon be repeated.
And certainly not one anyone (myself included) will soon forget.
Iga has set the bar so extraordinarily high at Roland Garros (and everywhere else) that it's hard not to see every other result short of a title as a failure.
But the reality is form dips happen to every great player at some point in their career.
After 5 years of high standards and dominance it's completely normal to have a moment of weakness like this.
In fact I'd say it happens so often it's actually more surprising it hasn't happened to Iga until now. It happened to the 3 greats Nadal, Federer and Djokovic at some stage in their career.
The good news for Iga is she's still so young, she has time on her side to improve and build on things.
We're only half way through the season so plenty of time for Iga to do just that this year.
I hope she doesn't get too discouraged with this loss but instead takes the wins here as a huge positive that she's back on track and just needs to keep working.
Things are definitely starting to click back into place. She just came across someone with supreme confidence at the moment who's got a lot more wins in finals under her belt.
And really if she had to lose to anyone here of all places I'm glad it was to the world's best instead of someone random.
There's never any shame in losing to the best, only shows you where your level is at.
Knowing Iga and her perfectionist nature she's going to keep working and come back even stronger.
This will definitely not be the last time we see Iga Swiatek's name on Coupe Suzanne Lenglen, of that I have no doubt.
Keep your head up Iga, while this loss hurts a lot now you'll bounce back from this!.
Who knows maybe this will be the year you discover your talent on grass.
Until then as always we take things one step and one match at a time.
See you on the green stuff.
Jazda!
Personally I don't think I'm quite ready to see anyone else holding that trophy just yet, so I'm going to give the women's final a miss this year and focus on the men this Sunday instead.



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