Efremova at Roland-Garros: “I want to go far”
At 17, the Australian Open juniors champion opens her first senior Grand Slam at Roland-Garros against Sorana Cîrstea and is targeting a Loïs Boisson-style run.
Ksenia Efremova, Paris 2026 | © Zuma / PsNewz
There are already those who’ll cry madness. Or wonder how it’s possible to be so spontaneous and uninhibited in front of a microphone. Ksenia Efremova, 17 years old and ranked beyond the 600th place on the WTA tour, said on Saturday that she wants to make a Loïs Boisson-style run at Roland-Garros 2026, a year on from the French player’s semi-final. For her first Grand Slam. Her first main draw on the women’s tour.
And yet – having had lukewarm exchanges in recent days with the likes of Rafael Jódar or João Fonseca, both so buried in their talking points they forget to answer the questions – give us the spontaneity and unrestrained ambition of Ksenia Efremova a hundred times over. If the Frenchwoman comes anywhere close to the champion’s potential she has carried since the first videos of her began circulating at the start of the decade, she’ll do the landscape a great deal of good.
Playing Roland-Garros, it’s home, it’s France. I’m going to try to do what Loïs Boisson did last year.
Asked what a good Roland-Garros would look like for her, she replied, word for word: “Do as well as I can and, of course, win matches. Honestly, I really want to go far, show everyone I’m really capable of it, and tell myself I’m sure of myself. I’m full of confidence, I can do it. Plus, playing Roland-Garros, it’s home, it’s France. I’m going to try to do what Loïs Boisson did last year – it wasn’t bad, honestly. But my aim is to play good matches, just play well.”
Getting through the first round against the Romanian Sorana Cîrstea would already be a stunning performance, on a Court Suzanne-Lenglen she has come to know well from practising on it heavily in recent days, because of the rain that has fallen on Paris. Her 2026 season has played out in fast-forward, and with a sizeable gap — one that hasn’t shaken her confidence in the slightest.
Crowned Australian Open junior champion on 1 February — second French player ever to do it, first to win a junior major since Elsa Jacquemot at Roland-Garros in 2020 — Efremova was due to resume a fortnight later at the WTA 125 in Les Sables-d’Olonne on a wildcard from Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. She injured her back in the warm-up and withdrew thirty minutes before her match against Mona Barthel. Two and a half months without competition followed.
Four matches against the Top 100, four defeats — but sets taken
Back in action in April at the Madrid qualifying, she beat Lulu Sun (6-4, 7-5) before falling to world No. 84 Alycia Parks (1-6, 6-7(4)). Then Saint-Malo (first-round defeat to Moyuka Uchijima, the eventual champion, but a set wrested away: 4-6, 6-3, 3-6), the Trophée Clarins in Paris (defeat to Tamara Korpatsch), and Strasbourg this week (first-round qualifying defeat to Oleksandra Oliynykova, world No. 66).
Four months between her junior Grand Slam and her senior one. Efremova has played four Top 100 opponents in her career, for four defeats. But Ksenia, born in Russia and naturalised French in 2023, four years after arriving at the Mouratoglou Academy, believes in herself. And it isn’t on the morning of her first Grand Slam that she’s going to stop saying so.
Asked about her practice partners, who now belong to that famous Top 100, she can’t help letting slip: “I love playing practice matches. I love winning them, above all.” At the Media Day on Saturday, between radio and television interviews alongside the agent who hasn’t missed a step of the progression he has been nursing for six years, she behaves as if she has always done this. “I love every surface. I love clay, hard, even grass. Honestly, I have no preference, I adapt very quickly. There you go.”
Last year, in the first round of qualifying, the pressure level — it was a joke.
Ksenia Efremova made her name in January by winning the Australian Open juniors. But that’s no longer her world. “It’s good to win a junior Grand Slam, but I’m aiming a bit higher than that. Winning a junior Grand Slam doesn’t make you a ‘wow’ player to your practice partners.”
On managing stress and emotions, Efremova insists a first Roland-Garros is a non-issue. “When you play tennis, there’s always tension. The moment you step into that pressure atmosphere, you know that’s going to be with you your whole career. So honestly, it’s not something new. The main draw at Roland-Garros, it’s just another experience. But it’s true that last year, in the first round of qualifying, the pressure level — it was a joke. I lost and it wasn’t pretty at all, I could have won, let’s say. But it doesn’t matter, you learn, you carry on. I’m not dead from it.”
