Kalinskaya saves the match from two points down to reach her first Roland-Garros quarter-final, beating Potapova in three, Chwalinska next

Anna Kalinskaya, the Russian 22nd seed, came back from two points down to defeat Anastasia Potapova 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(7) in two hours and 49 minutes on Court Suzanne-Lenglen on Monday – reaching the quarter-finals of Roland-Garros for the first time in her career, and the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam for the second time overall.

She will meet Maja Chwalinska. The polished qualifier reached the quarter-finals by winning against Frenchwoman Diane Parry 6-3, 6-2, having already taken out Olympic gold medallist Qinwen Zheng and former Roland-Garros semi-finalist Maria Sakkari on her way through. Parry was the last French player in the women’s draw.

The contest between Kalinskaya and Potapova had the shape of a match that should not have ended this way. Kalinskaya had taken the opening set 6-4 against the player who had eliminated defending champion Coco Gauff in the previous round; Potapova had levelled it with a 6-2 in the second; and in the third set, Potapova served for the match – twice.

Kalinskaya broke back both times. Forced to a deciding tie-break, the Russian then fell behind 1-4 and stood two points from going home. She found a way. The breaker ran to 9-7, won by Kalinskaya after a sequence that involved her hitting lines from positions her body had no business reaching.

Kalinskaya’s most significant Grand Slam result

Potapova, who had been ranked No. 97 in the world less than two months ago and was playing the tennis of her career on the back of her Saturday upset of Gauff, was the higher-form player going in and was the one who came closer to winning at the points that mattered. She did not, in the end, take any of them.

For Kalinskaya, the win is the most significant Grand Slam result of a career that has had to be rebuilt repeatedly from the consequences of injuries – most recently in 2024 when she had been forced to retire in the Wimbledon fourth round in tears against Elena Rybakina, the latest in a sequence of body breakdowns that had bookended every period of form she had managed to find.

This is her second career Grand Slam quarter-final, after the 2024 Australian Open, and her fifth clay-court quarter-final overall, the second on red clay following Strasbourg 2025.

She will face the winner of Frenchwoman Diane Parry against Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska, the other unseeded round-of-16 contest in the bottom half of the women’s draw, with a first Grand Slam semi-final on offer for either Kalinskaya or whoever comes out of that match.