2025 Roland Garros Semifinal Preview: Women's Draw

We have reached the final weekend of Roland Garros 2025. Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Lois Boisson, and Coco Gauff will battle it out to see who joins Madison Keys as 2025 Grand Slam champions.

Three of the names on that list are very recognizable. Sabalenka, Swiatek, and Gauff have been around the top of the game for a few years, they are all seeded in the top 5, and each has won at least 1 Slam. But where did Lois Boisson come from? Absolutely nowhere. The French wild card came into her first career Grand Slam main draw just 1 year removed from ACL surgery, ranked 361 in the world, and better known for this incident than anything her tennis has done. But here she is, in the Roland Garros semifinals, having taken down three seeds, including two in the top 10. She will be a massive crowd favorite - and that crowd will be LOUD.

Let’s look at the Roland Garros women’s semifinals by reviewing how our models evaluated each player’s journey through the draw and ending with a prediction for each match.

(2) Coco Gauff vs (WC) Lois Boisson

Coco Gauff has had a very good clay court season this year. She made the finals in both Madrid and Rome and has now made it to the final weekend of Roland Garros for the second time, having smashed her way through the draw. While she has been winning matches, she has made things very difficult for herself in one simple way: Coco Gauff cannot hold her serve. That can be illustrated through the statistics - she has had an 80% hold rate just once in her 5 Roland Garros matches while everyone else has done it at least twice - but I think that a better way to illustrate what Coco Gauff brings to the table, both on serve and on return, is through the second set of her Third Round win over Marie Bouzkova. Bouzkova held serve to go up 1-0, followed by 8 consecutive breaks of serve. The next time anyone held their serve was when Gauff held for 5-5. While Gauff ended up winning the set in a tiebreaker, she only managed 1 game point in her first 4 service games of the set. The numbers she has been putting up behind her return of serve have been stellar. She has recorded extremely high Return Excitement Indexes and broken in at least 5/9 of her return games in all 5 matches. Return and defense are winning her matches. But eventually, and especially as the season moves over to the grass courts next week, the serve will have to either get better or come back to bite her.

Two weeks ago, Lois Boisson was draw filler. She was supposed to accomplish her dream of finally playing at Roland Garros and bow out. But she pulled off one of the upsets of the tournament in taking down #24 seed Elise Mertens. Then, as Tuesday's matches played out, I looked at the draw that I have been filling out and realized that she and Alycia Parks, who defeated #14 seed Karolina Muchova, had blasted a giant hole in Jessica Pegula's quarter, and someone had to fall out. We would have a cool story in the Round of 16. Boisson, the lowest ranked of the bunch, was that player. But when she got there, she was the final French singles player standing, and Paris noticed that, too. In her last two matches, monumental upset wins over #3 seed Jessica Pegula and #6 seed Mirra Andreeva, the crowds on Court Philippe-Chatrier have been deafening. And they seem to have gotten to both high seeds. Serve CFOE Rating describes player performance relative to match situation, and it tends to regress to 2 in wins. In Boisson's last two matches, she has put up ratings of 9.4 and 6.5, while the numbers on her return have sat around 2. Plenty of that could be luck, and she is definitely a candidate for negative mean regression there, but the crowds pile pressure up on her opponents, and as proceedings get close at the end, the rowdy Parisian crowd makes that heavy forehand, with the highest spin rates of any woman at Roland Garros, feel that much heavier.

If there is one way for Lois Boisson to win this match, it is through the crowd. Coco Gauff would have to continue to struggle mightily on her own serve, allowing Boisson to stay in contact for long enough to get the crowd into it. Then, Boisson would have to take advantage of the few opportunities presented to her in those moments. It is highly unlikely, but there is a path.

Prediction: Gauff in 2. Our model has Gauff's win probability at 92%. Below are the predicted outcomes

(1) Aryna Sabalenka vs (5) Iga Swiatek

When the draw came out, this is the matchup that fans wanted. Sabalenka and Swiatek have been far and away the two best women's tennis players in the world over the last 3 years and have won a combined 8 Grand Slam titles. But they have only faced off once before in a Grand Slam. Iga Swiatek came back from a break down in the 3rd set to win their semifinal at the 2022 US Open. This is a matchup 1,000 days in the making.

Iga Swiatek has run the gauntlet to make it here. In the Round of 16, she faced Elena Rybakina, who has caused her a lot of trouble in the past. Rybakina blitzed Swiatek, going up a set and a break very quickly. But Iga Swiatek made some changes, Rybakina's level dipped, and Swiatek was able to get up off the mat and into the quarterfinals to face Elina Svitolina. Svitolina posed a stiff challenge, but Swiatek played at a very high level, took advantage of opportunities when presented to her, and won that match in straight sets. Swiatek has been fantastic behind her serve, with a hold rate above 70% in all 5 of her matches and 26 holds in her first 27 service games of the tournament. She has also been formidable behind her return, but in matches where she has had some trouble - namely in the Third Round against Jacqueline Cristian and the Round of 16 against Elena Rybakina - she has had trouble breaking serve, with break rates at 30% or lower.

Aryna Sabalenka breezed her way into the second week of Roland Garros, taking just 304 points to win her first 3 matches. In her last two matches, she ran into two very tricky opponents: Amanda Anisimova, who came into that match having won 5 of their 7 meetings, and Qinwen Zheng, who defeated Sabalenka in Rome just two weeks ago and won the Olympic gold medal at Roland Garros last year. She fought her way through both of those matches, but her quarterfinal against Qinwen showed a concerning sign: Sabalenka's Serve CFOE Rating in that match was 10. This match shows the value of using Serve CFOE Ratings to predict potential mean regression. Despite only facing two break points and not saving either one, Sabalenka's back was agaisnt the wall on her serve. She managed to dig her way out of trouble enough to win in straight sets, but the World #1 will need to improve to beat the likes of 3-time defending champion Iga Swiatek.

This match will come down to the returns of serve. Both players have done very well behind their serve this tournament, but whoever can make headway in some early return games will start to pile the pressure onto their opponent. With both players being incredible front-runners, they only need to create a small window to run away with this match.

Prediction: Swiatek in 2. Our model has Swiatek's win probability at 55%. Below are the predicted outcomes