–

ROLAND GARROS – At age 22, after a not particularly impressive junior career and with her career high singles ranking of No. 152 a year behind her, Frenchwoman Loïs Boisson is into the second week of Roland Garros.

The 22-year-old plays No. 3 seed Jessica Pegula in the round of 16. And on Court Philippe-Chatrier. Bucket-list time.

Boisson’s physique is what stands out – she has muscles on her muscles.

And her game style – with a forehand that a ton of work on it – over 3,000 rpm, at times – and easy sliding style is almost Spanish, rather than French.

But it’s her resilience that stands out.

A year ago, the then-21-year-old won the WTA 125 in Saint-Malo and leaped to a career-high ranking of No. 152. She earned herself a first main-draw wild card for Roland Garros.

Then, a few weeks later at the Paris WTA 125, held just a few minutes away from Roland Garros in the middle of the Bois-de-Boulogne, she ruptured her ACL in her first-round match.

So much for Roland Garros. She was out eight months after surgery on her ACL and meniscus and just returned in mid-February, with a real ranking of No. 361.

A year on, she finally got her main-draw wild card.

Boisson then upset No. 24 seed Elise Mertens in three sets, made short work of the solid Anhelina Kalinina, and then ran into another French wild card in the third round, Elsa Jacquemot.

She won that one 7-5 in the third set after dropping the second 0-6, amid plenty of nerves and a knee that was causing her a lot of pain for most of it.

It wasn’t a cakewalk of a draw. And if you thought it would end on Monday against Pegula it … didn’t. She’s into the quarterfinals – only the second ever wild card to make it that far in Paris (the other being Mary Pierce in 2002).

First exposure went viral

If you heard of her at all – and you’d have to be a diehard – it was because of this unfortunate (and rather classless) situation a few weeks ago.

The moment Harriet Dart asked the umpire to ask her opponent, Lois Boisson to wear deodorant. She also lost the game to Lois Boisson.

Second slide; Lois Boisson post after defeating Harriet Dart. pic.twitter.com/MzY1YhnlBw
— Sports Radio Brila FM (@Brilafm889) April 19, 2025

Boisson certainly has had the last laugh.

Dart (whom we spotted walking rather sleepily out the front door of her rental apartment just a five-minute walk from Roland Garros, an hour before Boisson beat Jacquemot and made the second week) wasn’t around long.

The No. 15 seed in the singles qualifying, she lost 6-1, 6-2 in barely an hour to Anastasiia Sobolieva in the first round.

And she and Kimberly Birrell lost in the first round of doubles to Irina-Camelia Begu and Yanina Wickmayer.

Not that karma is a thing at all.

Not a hotshot junior

Boisson’s peak ranking as a junior was No. 171. And she only played the junior event in Paris once – in 2021, in her final year of eligibility. She lost in three sets in the first round to the player who would quickly become … Diana Shnaider. That was her only match at the Grand Slam level in juniors.

She also had a wild card into the qualifying of the main event that year (as she also did in 2022 and 2023).

Boisson won just one match in those three attempts – her first one, against Spain’s Eva Guerrero Alvarez in 2021.

Here’s what she looked like then.

That win over Jacquemot was perhaps the toughest. Jacquemot WAS the next hope, the junior hotshot while Boisson just sort of went through the juniors without making much of a splash.

Jacquemot is a former junior No. 1 and was the Roland Garros junior champion in the pandemic year in 2020.

A re-tooled forehand

Boisson had a serious shoulder issue that came from the technique on her forehand. And so in 2022, she completely changed the technique on that shot.

The shot it is now has so much spin that it leaps up to force her opponents to hit the ball above their shoulders. It’s a boffo stroke, and very unusual on the women’s side.

After all that, she has a tattoo just below that right shoulder that spells out “Resilience”.

Even with a loss to Pegula her ranking will jump nearly 200 spots, to about No. 170. Not far from her career high. And with the wind of momentum to take her through the rest of the season.

Grim pickings on the French women’s side

Not only that, it gives France a little hope on the women’s side with their more accomplished women of recent years – Caroline Garcia and Alizé Cornet – retiring or retired, and former top-10 Kristina Mladenovic MIA.

Mladenovic, who hasn’t played since Dubai in February, is missing in action at Roland Garros for the first time since … 2009. (We saw her lookalike brother walking into what we assume is the family apartment, down the street from Open Court’s Paris headquarters, the other way. You wonder what the Mladenovic clan is doing these days).

The top-ranked Frenchwoman has only been French for a year – No. 72 Varvara Gracheva.

A couple of others are barely hanging in the top 100. And the group of players who have been getting wild cards for years – Chloe Paquet, Jessika Ponchet, Clara Burel and others, may well have hit their ceiling.

So much so, that the French Federation is giving every opportunity known to mankind to 16-year-old Ksenia Efremova who – like Gracheva – is a Russian who trained in France for many years. (You might remember the little blonde girls who was around those original UTS events at the Mouratoglou during the pandemic, when she was only 11). Efremova has now taken citizenship, and she got a wild card into the women’s singles qualifying.

Unlike the men’s side, they could use some happy news.

(Additional information from l’Équipe).