A pair of unheralded faces, before now, will vie for the women’s French Open championship today in Roland Garros.
Success seemed to come so quickly and easily for Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova as a junior, including three Grand Slam girls’ titles and a No. 1 ranking by her early teens.
Not so much in the professional ranks.
Her match against Barbora Krejcikova at the French Open on Saturday comes at the end of Pavlyuchenkova’s 52nd major tournament, the most Slam appearances before reaching a final for any woman in the Open era, which began in 1968.
Here’s what present-day Pavlyuchenkova thinks her younger self would make of that: “14-year-old me would tell me, ‘Like, what took you so long?’”