The champion lost a set for the first time in this tournament but she knew how to drag herself out of a dangerous place
The man holding the camera leaned in towards Iga Swiatek. The man holding the pen held it out to her. The new French Open champion thought for a while about how to encapsulate her torrent of thoughts and emotions into a little glass square around the size of a Pop Tart. Eventually she scrawled a number – #4, for her fourth grand slam title – and a single word. “Surréel”.
And it really was surreal, or at least as about as surreal as it can ever be watching a habitual major champion win another major. For if the outcome was expected then virtually nothing else about this final was. It was one thing, and then suddenly it became a whole other thing: a regal procession that somehow morphed into a scrap for survival against the fearless and admirable Karolina Muchova, a match that dragged the world No 1 to places she had never been before, places she never wanted to go.