One-Slam Wonderful: Can any of these major champions reign again at Roland Garros?

It is the ultimate left-handed compliment in tennis, coined to pay homage to a near-miraculous achievement. So remarkable, in fact, that the phrase also became a snide put down: a name for a player who was lucky enough to have all the tumblers fall into place one time to win a Grand Slam tournament, a feat destined never to recur.

He or she is a “One-Slam Wonder.”

The OSW sobriquet has trailed some like a warning label  (think Iva Majoli or Gaston Gaudio), but it doesn’t really apply, or stick, to those who managed to nest the Grand Slam highlight like a crown jewel in a generally glittering career (think Andy Roddick or Caroline Wozniacki). But let’s be real. Everyone in this cohort, though, are just plain "One Slam Wonderful."

The upcoming Roland Garros tournament will feature 10 players who may still have a chance to shed the OSW label by winning it all. On the ATP side, Daniil Medvedev and Marin Cilic are primed to compete at Stade Roland Garros. It’s a whole other story in the WTA, where eight active single-Slam champions could bid to win a second major. The only one in that octet who can be definitively written off is Wozniacki, the 2018 Australian Open champion.

Wozniacki, who has three children and has worked as a broadcast analyst, but she still retains a “protected ranking” (No. 71, based on her position when she stopped competing in 2024). She could theoretically parachute in to play as a direct entry, but it’s unlikely. The seven other women with a better shot at taking all the marbles again are: Madison Keys, Marketa Vondrousova, Emma Raducanu, Sofia Kenin, Bianca Andreescu, Sloane Stephens and Jelena Ostapenko.

Let’s survey the contenders.

Daniil Medvedev, age 30

• Won: 2021 US Open champion
• Current ranking, No. 9; Career-high, No. 1
• ATP main tour finals record: 23-20

Medvedev stands head-and-shoulders among OSWs due to his consistency (43 tour finals). Were it not for the extraordinary talents and longevity of the Big Three, the lanky Russian might have half-a-dozen major titles - but probably none on the clay and pulverized brick in Paris. This hardcourt expert failed to win a single match at Roland Garros in his first four attempts (2017-2020), and advanced as far as the quarterfinals only once (lwhere he lost to Stefanos Tsitsipas).

Last year, Medvedev changed his strings during his first-round clash with Cameron Norrie, hoping to find better feel on a surface that has always baffled him. “This one (tournament)  is so different from Rome and Madrid,” he told reporters after the match. “The clay, the balls, like, everything. I had one week here (in Paris). I didn't find anything that worked well. So during the match, I had to change something when I was losing. It actually worked. Unfortunately I didn't win." (After mounting a furious comeback, Medvedev lost a long fifth set.)

Marin Cilic, age 37

• Won: 2014 US Open champion
• Current ranking, No. 47; Career-high, No. 3
• ATP main tour finals record: 21-16

Another gifted player who came long at the wrong time if not the wrong place, Cilic has a better chance than Medvedev at Roland Garros. When the men played in the fourth round in 2022, Cilic rolled to the win in straight sets. The Bunyanesque Croatian went to post his personal best at the tournament, a semifinal loss Casper Ruud, but serious knee problems soon forced him off the tour.

An outstanding player on grass, Cilic’s best chance for another major would be at Wimbledon, where the 6-foot-6 has served his way to four quarterfinals and one championship match (a 2016 a loss to Roger Federer). His forehand is massive, and he is an excellent mover for a big man.

The OSWs on the WTA side are a varied lot, ranging from recent title winners to those who were knocked off the fast track for any number of reasons and never really found their way back on.  Let’s look at them chronologically, starting with the most recent winner.

Madison Keys, age 31

• Won: 2025 Australian Open
• Current ranking, No. 19; Career-high, No. 5
• WTA main tour finals record: 10-6

Keys is an outlier among the OSWs, because she finally broke through to win a major at an advanced age. The detail is striking because the American right-hander was a legit prodigy—an Australian Open semifinalist at the age of 19.  That result launched a career roller-coast ride at the elite level.  Keys has punched through to  11 quarterfinals or better in the decade-plus since her breakthrough, including five semis and a US Open final in 2015. But no Slam at all until 2025.

Keys' best surface is hard courts. She’s a 5-foot-10 belter, not as mobile or quick as the top clay-court experts. Yet she has survived to compete in the second week of Roland Garros five times, best result a 2018 semifinal. Her success on clay owes to the amount of time the slower surface allows her to set up shots with her feet planted, in good balance.

Marketa Vondrousova, age 26

• Won: 2023 Wimbledon
• Current ranking, No 44; Career-high, No. 6
• WTA main tour finals record: 3-3

Czechia has always punched way above its weight class in tennis, producing intriguing players flush with style and skills. Vondrousova is the perfect example: a precocious southpaw, she came out of nowhere to win her first main tour title at a now-defunct event in Biel-Bienne, Switzerland at age 17. She is all touch and guile and defensive savvy—Mats Wilander has said she has “the best hands in the women’s game.”

But Vondrousova has been fragile, her promising career interrupted for lengthy periods by injury and three surgeries. Thus, her overall  win-loss record appears thin due to time missed. But Vondrousova is clearly a big match player. Despite limited experience she was, a surprise finalist in 2019 final at Roland Garros (where she lost to Ashleigh Barty), and the singles silver medalist at the Tokyo Olympic Games (lost to Belinda Bencic). Currently, she is embroiled in a dispute with the ITIA (the International Tennis Integrity Agency) over having refused an out-of-competition doping test last December. Her participation at Roland Garros is uncertain.

Emma Raducanu age 23

• Won: 2021 US Open (as a qualifier)
• Current ranking, No. 30; Career-high, No. 10
• WTA Main Tour Finals record: 1-1

If you’re fated to win just one title on the main tour, it may as well be a Grand Slam. That’s what Raducanu must think in her darkest moments, as she continues to pay the price for producing the perhaps the most singular achievement in tennis at that 2021 US Open. Since then, she has experienced fluctuating results, cycled through many coaches, and struggled with assorted ailments and injuries. Her status for Paris is uncertain, because Raducanu has been absent from the tour since Indian Wells, fighting a post-viral illness.

Raducanu did show up for Rome, and practiced with her peers before withdrawing from the event. This might bode well for her participation at Roland Garros. Raducanu has a silky, eye-catching game, athleticism and quick feet, but her shortfall of elite-level power is a great disadvantage on clay, where opponents can bully her. She has played at Roland Garros only twice (2022 and 2025), winning just two matches. She may choose to forgo the clay-court Slam and focus on the upcoming season on grass, where her game shines.

Sofia Kenin, age 27

• Won: 2020 Australian Open
• Current ranking, No. 74; Career-high, No. 4
• WTA main tour finals record: 5-5

Kenin has been an enigma since that marvelous run at the Australian Open made her, at age 21, the youngest American woman to win a major since Serena Williams 18 years earlier. Kenin did it with a different MO, though, relying on terrific anticipation,excellent timing, and a full tool box to outwit rather than outhit opponents. She demonstrated her versatility again a few months later, when she reached the Roland Garros final and lost to Iga Swiatek. It looked then like the U.S. had a potential superstar in the making.

But things swiftly went south as the pressure of expectations settled on her shoulders. Opponents figured out her game, while Kenin’s relationship with her coach-father Alex became turbulent. Kenin grew impatient and moody. Soon, she was really struggling, and the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic did not help her cause. Injury and a long hiatus also helps explain how Kenin started 2022 ranked No. 12 and ended the year outside the Top 200. She has since worked her way back into the Top 100, so who can say what comes next?

Bianca Andreescu, age 27

• Won: 2019 US Open
• Current ranking, No. 136; Career-high No. 4
• WTA main tour finals record: 3-4

On the surface, neither Andreescu nor her game bears much resemblance to Raducanu. Yet the Canadian and British Grand Slam champions have something big in common: they have felt the pressure that comes with having satisfied at an early age the dreams of their native tennis fans. Both have struggled to improve on their Cinderella stories.

Shortly after Andreescu won in New York, a meniscus tear in her left knee forced her to withdraw from the year-end WTA Finals. Then COVID-19 hit hard, and Andreescu ended up out of competition for 15 months. More injuries awaited. Andreescu’s flat game is best suited to hard courts; her main draw record at Roland Garros is a tepid 6-6. But she’s out there, grinding, even if the payoff will be deferred.

Sloane Stephens, age 33

• Won: 2017 US Open
• Current ranking, No. 362; Career-high, No. 3
• WTA main tour finals record: 10-4

Here’s another amusing coincidence: The only WTA OSW who has as many tour titles as Stephens is Keys. She is also the person Stephens defeated to win her only Slam, an event that deferred Keys’ own shining moment for eight years.

Like Keys, Stephens hit the hard courts running. Just 19, she upended Serena Williams on her way to the semifinals at the 2013 Australian Open. Since then, Stephens' results have fluctuated, seemingly overdependent on inspiration. She always moved like a cat and had good clay-court instincts, but age, and perhaps fitness, have caught up with her. Her ranking says it all.

Jelena Ostapenko, age 28

• Won: 2017 Roland Garros
• Current ranking, No. 36; Career-high, No. 5
• WTA main tour finals record: 9-9

Don’t sleep on Ostapenko. Forget that crazy side hustle of selling swag from tournaments on the Internet. Forget about the handshake disses (and other) controversies. Consider instead: This is a woman who won Roland Garros at the age of 20, and managed to avoid the drama, confusion and ambivalence so many other OSWs experienced. The Latvian slugger has had a long career blissfully free of serious injury, and is still in her prime.

We all know Ostapenko’s game. She wallops the ball and keeps walloping it no matter how the match is going. But Ostapenko’s bugaboo is consistency. She isn’t a great mover, so she needs to get a good clean swing with her feet planted to do serious damage. That’s why she’s only won consecutive matches at Roland Garros on only two occasions since she won the whole thing.

The chance that we’ll see one of those One-Slam Wonders crowned champion in Paris is slim, but as any of them can tell you, with a wink, “Miracles happen."