I knew Mirra Andreeva was a real one when, as a 16-year-old winning big matches at the Australian Open this year, she said, “Fourth round is nothing.” What 16-year-old says such a thing? Those words should have frightened every active WTA player. In the time since delivering that bone-chilling quote, Andreeva turned 17 and, this week, became the youngest major semifinalist since Martina Hingis in 1997. But to call her semifinal run at Roland-Garros miraculous would be slightly misleading. It’s more of an addendum to an ongoing miracle. Andreeva has skipped the early struggle phase of her career, at least as far as the most important tournaments are concerned. The prodigy has appeared in five majors now, and she has always come away with wins: third round, fourth round, second round, fourth round, semifinal. 

While she’s had her slump weeks on tour, whenever the pressure, prestige, and payouts are highest, she delivers way beyond her years. There are still some rough spots in Andreeva’s game—that serve can get picked on—but her indefatigable defense and terrifyingly steady mind were enough to take her deep into the second week on the clay. On Wednesday, in the biggest win of her prodigious career, she dispatched No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka, who might have been having an off day physically but was still on enough to wipe out much of the tour. Andreeva had recently been routed by Sabalenka in Madrid but came away with the three-set win this time, forcing Sabalenka into errors with brutal consistency. “I always play the way I want to play. We have a plan with my coach for the match, but after, I forget everything, and when I play a match, I don’t have any thoughts in my head,” she said afterward, essentially describing the ideal flow state for an athlete. How much further could this powerful teen brain take her in the tournament?

Not much further. Andreeva was briefly in tears as she lost to her semifinal opponent Jasmine Paolini, a charismatic 28-year-old Italian whose career has blown up over the past nine months. If Andreeva is proof that a kid can arrive on tour with nearly everything figured out, Paolini conversely offers hope to the late bloomers. Some things take time. To take one example: She was a latecomer to hard courts and has said she didn’t play a tournament on the surface until she was 14. Paolini was well into her pro career when she figured out she didn’t have to artificially change up her game too much to suit the hard court and could play more or less the way she liked to play on her native clay, and then, look at that, she went and won a 1000-level title in Dubai this season. (Someone should have told her: Surface homogenization is real!) 

Paolini, who will enter the top 10 next week, is still a real natural on the clay, finding angles with her high-kicking forehand, flying around with wondrous footwork, and working around the serve-based limitations that come with being 5 foot 4. She has eliminated some big names this week, and she never let Andreeva find a single foothold in their semifinal match, despite having lost to her in Madrid just a few weeks ago. This tournament marks her first trip past the fourth round of a major tournament. Alongside Jannik Sinner, Paolini has fashioned a dream fortnight for Italian tennis. “I learned a bit later than other players maybe, but to dream is the most important thing in sport and life. I’m happy I could dream this moment,” she said after her semifinal win.

As joyous as this run to the final has been, Paolini, in all likelihood, has about an hour of play time on Court Philippe-Chatrier on Saturday. That’s because Iga Swiatek, after going down match point to Naomi Osaka in the second round, has been untouchable ever since, extending her win streak at Roland-Garros to 20 matches. In Thursday’s semifinal, the No. 1 seed continued her comprehensive campaign against Coco Gauff’s happiness, taking their head-to-head record to 11–1 all-time, with all of those wins in straight sets. Gauff, trying a new tactic, opened the match by hitting more aggressively than she had in previous outings, but errors accumulated and it fizzled out. For all her success elsewhere on tour, Gauff, who will rise to No. 2 in the world next week, is still stuck in hell as far as this particular matchup is concerned. And Swiatek, to a degree that would make her retiring idol Rafa proud, enters every Roland-Garros final with an aura of total impermeability.

—Sascha Zverev’s domestic abuse case has been “discontinued”.

—Novak has had knee surgery, leaving his season in doubt.

—For our NYC readers: There’s a bad atmosphere at the public courts in Bed Stuy.

—Not everyone is happy that Rafa is playing in the Olympics.

—Speaking of Rafa, Giri reports in Defector that there will be no tidy ending to his career.

—The Atlantic waxes poetic on the one-handed backhand.