Because of how different clay court tennis is stylistically from hard court or grass court, the French Open lends itself to dominance by players that have mastered that surface. On the men's side, we saw Rafael Nadal lord over the clay for nearly two decades,

Only in sports, and probably only in tennis, would a Black girl growing up in Florida and a White girl growing up 5,500 miles away in Minsk grow up to collide in Paris, chasing one another’s dreams.

This is an important occasion in the Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Świątek rivalry. This is their first meeting at Roland Garros on the clay.