A Roland-Garros finalist, a Wimbledon wild card still – and a holiday before either
Maja Chwalinska, the surprise Roland-Garros runner-up, faces an unusual challenge: despite her new top 25 ranking, she’s not guaranteed a main draw spot at Wimbledon. The entry list closed before her incredible run, leaving her hoping for a wild card or facing qualifying. It’s a unique quirk of the tennis calendar.
Maja Chwalinska, Roland-Garros 2026 | © PsNewz
Roland-Garros runner-up Maja Chwalinska will skip the entire grass-court lead-up and play only Wimbledon this year, the Roland-Garros runner-up said in Paris – and even her place in that draw is not yet guaranteed, despite the fortnight that has transformed her ranking.
Chwalinska, who came through qualifying ranked No. 114 and will rise to around No. 21 when the new rankings are published, said she needed to rest before the grass season. “I’m not going to play anything before Wimbledon, that’s for sure,” she said. “I definitely need some time to recharge. In the back of my head I knew I was going on vacation after the French Open.”
Asked what the next 48 hours held, she laughed: “I have no idea. I hope I’ll finally get some proper sleep – and that I’ll finally eat something.”
WIMBLEDON Qualifications
The complication is one of timing. Wimbledon’s main-draw entry list closed six weeks before the tournament, based on the rankings of 18 May, with the cut falling around No. 101. On that date Chwalinska was still No. 114, outside the line. Her surge to the final came afterwards, too late to count for direct entry. Her new ranking would comfortably clear any cutoff, but the list that governs her place was frozen before any of it happened.
That leaves her three ways into the main draw: a wild card from the All England Club, the qualifying event, or enough late withdrawals to lift her off the alternate list. Asked whether she hoped for a wild card, and how she would feel about returning to qualifying after reaching a Grand Slam final, she treated it lightly. “That would be the news of the century,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t expect it. But I’ll treat it as a challenge. It’s a new surface, I don’t have much time, but I’ll give my all.”
‘It would the news of the century”
Wimbledon’s singles wild cards are expected to be announced around 17 June, with the main draw released on 26 June, before qualifying, held off-site at Roehampton from 22 to 25 June, even begins.
Grass, she added, has been a mixed surface for her. “Last year it was a struggle, honestly,” she said. “But before that I loved playing on it – I can use a lot of touch and slices, I move pretty well and I anticipate well. It’s always exciting because it’s such a short period of time.”
Grass memories
The best grass season so far came in 2022: ranked around 170, Chwalinska won three qualifying rounds at Wimbledon – beating Coco Vandeweghe among others – to reach the main draw, then upset Katerina Siniakova in the first round before falling to Alison Riske-Amritraj. Days earlier she had made the quarter-finals at the WTA 125 in Ilkley. Since then, though, the surface has gone quiet for her: in 2023 she lost in the first round of Wimbledon qualifying to Carole Monnet and went out early at Ilkley. In 2025, she lost first round at the Wimbledon qualies against Raluka Serban from Cyprus.
Chwalinska’s journey echo Loïs Boisson barely a year ago. The Frenchwoman lit up Roland-Garros 2025 as a wild card ranked 361st, beating Pegula and Andreeva on her way to the semi-finals, and rocketed to No. 65 – only to find the ranking surge hadn’t yet caught up with the calendar. Denied a Wimbledon main-draw wild card, she was sent to qualifying as the top seed and lost her first-ever match on grass, in the first round, on a windy court at Roehampton.
