Maja Chwalinska soars from No. 114 to No. 21 following dream run to Roland Garros final

The new WTA rankings are out and the most notable move comes from the player who took Roland Garros by storm over the last few weeks, Maja Chwalinska, who soars from No. 114 to No. 21 after reaching the first Grand Slam final of her career on the terre battue.

And it was an unlikely run for many reasons, most notably as she was the lowest-ranked woman to reach the final of Roland Garros in the history of the WTA rankings, which dates back to 1975.

She was also just the second player in the Open Era, woman or man, to reach a Grand Slam final as a qualifier, after Emma Raducanu, who won the 2021 US Open as a qualifier.

She had also never even beaten a Top 50 player going into the tournament, but took out four of them—Elise Mertens, Maria Sakkari, Anna Kalinskaya and Diana Shnaider—en route to the final.

And with that, the 24-year-old from Poland is rewarded in a big way on the WTA rankings today, shattering her previous career-high of No. 113 for not only her Top 100 debut, but also her Top 50, Top 40 and Top 30 debuts. She almost cracked the Top 20, too.

Chwalinska was asked after the final if there’s much of a gap in level between the top players and those outside the Top 100.

“I know many, many great players that are ranked outside Top 100,” she said. “You know, it’s such a thin line now. I feel like a lot of things need to click, but yeah, for sure there so many great players. Yeah, I wish them all the best. I hope that my story these last days was inspiring for them, and I’ll see them in the—let’s say—Top 50 now.”

With barely any ranking points to defend until September, the sky’s the limit for Chwalinska’s ranking this summer. But before getting back on the horse, she’ll take a bit of much-needed time off.

“I’m not going to play anything before grass, that’s before Wimbledon, that’s for sure. I definitely need some time to recharge,” she said. “Even before Roland Garros, I said that I need vacation after the tournament. So now it’s three weeks that I’m kind of like—not waiting, because I wanted to be here, but I just knew in the back of my head that I’m going for the vacation after French Open.

“Yeah, definitely need some time to recharge."

Meanwhile, the woman who beat Chwalinska for the title in Paris, Mirra Andreeva, rises from No. 8 to No. 6, her highest ranking of the season, and one spot off the career-high of No. 5 she hit last year.

And the other two semifinalists, Marta Kostyuk and Shnaider, both make notable jumps, the former rising from No. 15 to a new career-high of No. 12, and the latter—a former world No. 11—jumping from No. 23 to No. 16, her highest ranking since last July.