For a refresher on what all the metrics in this writeup mean, click here.
Of the top 4 players in Clutch Factor over Expected per Point in the Roland Garros women’s draw, 3 are in the semifinals. And the 4th-ranked player lost in the quarterfinals to the 6th-ranked player. We look at the women’s semifinals by looking at how our models evaluated each of their journeys through the draw and end with a basic tactical analysis and prediction for each match.
(3) Coco Gauff vs (1) Iga Swiatek
Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek have played each other at Roland Garros at the quarterfinal stage or later in 3 consecutive years. Iga Swiatek is the 2-time defending champion, having defeated Gauff in the 2022 finals and the 2023 quarterfinals.
The two previous victories follow the trend of their early rivalry. The 23-year-old Swiatek and the 20-year-old Gauff have played each other 11 times on the WTA tour. Swiatek has gotten the better of Gauff on 10 of those occasions. Gauff’s only victory came last year in Cincinnati. While Roland Garros has the most dramatic games, with a mean Excitement Average of 0.40, Cincinnati is 17th, playing over 1 standard deviation faster than the court that they will share tomorrow.
Iga Swiatek has had one major scare in this tournament, in the 2nd round against Naomi Osaka. Osaka went up 5-2 in the 3rd set and even served for the match, but Swiatek came back and took the deciding set 7-5. For the rest of the tournament, she has been historically dominant. In fact, the Osaka match encompasses nearly 40% of the points in Swiatek’s 5 matches. After squeaking through that match, Swiatek would go on to win 20 consecutive games from 5-2 in the 2nd set of her 3rd round match until 1-0 in the 2nd set of her quarterfinal. She has not allowed opponents into her service games, with her Excitement Average on serve coming in at least 2 standard deviations below the mean in all but 1 of her matches and only facing 4 break points outside of her 2nd round clash with Naomi Osaka. For the full tournament, that is 13 break points faced and 45 break point opportunities. Coming in having won each of the last tournaments, the world’s top player has dominated most of this tournament.
Like Swiatek, Coco Gauff comes into the semifinals having lost just one set, the first set of her quarterfinal against Ons Jabeur. Unlike Swiatek, however, she has been vulnerable on multiple occasions. Her third-round match against Dayana Yastremska finished 6-4 6-2 on the scoreboard, but the match finished with the 9th-highest Excitement Average of the tournament, at 0.45. There was no huge disparity between serve and return either. And at an average of over 7.5 points per game, that match was a real adventure. In her quarterfinal match against Ons Jabeur, Gauff lost that first set, and the Excitement Average on her serve was concerningly high at 0.42, but she mostly settled in from there. Gauff had a third match with a high Excitement Average, in the second round against Tamara Zidansek. While Swiatek has had one tough match and blown through the rest of her draw, Coco Gauff has taken a few detours on the way to the semifinals.
To win this match, Coco Gauff will need to land a significantly high percentage of her very aggressive first serve. She has said in interviews that she accepts double faults as an appropriate exchange for just how effective her first serve is when she lands it, and she will need to hit a purple patch against Swiatek to have a chance. Even then, Iga Swiatek is so dominant on clay, so dominant at Roland Garros, especially this year, and so dominant against Coco Gauff
Prediction: Iga Swiatek in 2. While it is the most hyped of the 2 semifinals, this one might be over inside an hour.
(12) Jasmine Paolini vs Mirra Andreeva
While the first semifinal will be between two of the game’s top stars, the second one will be between two of its most impressive upstarts – both of whom were still in the doubles draw entering today (Paolini is through to the semifinals there, while Andreeva withdrew after her victory in singles). Jasmine Paolini is about to reach the top 10 for the first time at the age of 28 and is going through a breakout season, including winning her first Masters 1000 title in Dubai. Mirra Andreeva is 17 years old and only in her second year on tour after introducing herself to the world in the 2023 Australian Open Junior Girls’ final, a marathon loss to Alina Korneeva.
Jasmine Paolini arrives in the semifinals on the heels of three consecutive closeout victories. The first thing you will notice about Paolini is her size. At 5’4”, she does not have the size of the more aggressive players, including today’s victim Elena Rybakina (6’0”). Therefore, she has to track down a lot of balls and make her bones in the return game. And over the past 2 weeks, she has done just that – the Excitement Average of her return games has been above the mean in every match she has played so far, a feat that none of the other semifinalists can boast. She has struggled on serve, with a negative CFOE rating on serve in 3 of her 5 matches, but the return game has kept her around and propelled her to victory.
Mirra Andreeva is another of the semifinalists who should not have made it out of the second round. She took out Victoria Azarenka 6-3 3-6 7-5 with an unsustainably high Return CFOE of 12.56 and a 77% conversion rate on break points. Since then, the 17-year-old has been impressive. She managed to keep her composure in two consecutive very tough environments: facing the final French singles player remaining in Varvara Gracheva and playing an opponent in Aryna Sabalenka who is highly ranked, has beaten her multiple times in dominant fashion, and had absolutely no rhythm despite the scoreboard staying incredibly close throughout. In the main draw, Andreeva has had the 2nd highest expected clutch factor, the highest total clutch factor, and the 3rd highest CFOE rating. This means that she has found herself in a lot of trouble over the course of the tournament and found a way to dig herself out each time.
This one will come down to Andreeva playing intelligently and maintaining her composure. Against someone like Paolini who excels in returns and defense, it is important to be patient and focused with every shot. If Andreeva can do that, this semifinal could come down to the end.
Prediction: Jasmine Paolini in 3. I think that this match will be very close, but Paolini will find a break at the right time and take the match.
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