Jasmine Paolini reached a historic finalthe fourth for an Italian player at Roland Garros and the first in the Italian sense since 2012, when her now doubles partner Sara Errani pulled herself up to the last act with one of the most beautiful rides in the history of Italian tennis.
There is a very particular fact that catches the eye, and which is basically common to the majority of the Italians who made Italy dream in the roaring years. The Tuscan, in fact, is among the least tall players to have managed to take the last act of a Slam with her height of 63 centimeters from 1980 onwards.
Before her, in fact, considering the one just mentioned as the base year, there were six who reached the final of one of the four major tournaments with a height of less than one meter and 65. Two of these are blue: we have one already mentioned, that one Sara Errani who from his height of 1.64m managed to reach the Parisian final 12 years ago, as well as two other Slam semi-finals between the French capital and the US Open, the other is Roberta Vinciauthor of one of the most famous coups in the history of tennis when she beat Serena Williams in the semi-final in New York (then lost in the final to Flavia Pennetta, who had beaten Simona Halep, number 2 in the world at the time).
PROMISED LAND! Jasmine Paolini dominates Andreeva and takes Italy to the final at Roland Garros after 12 years!
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But this world is not only full of Italians: between 1977 and 1980 the Australian Wendy Turnbull, 1.64 m, reached three finals in three out of four Slams (she only missed Wimbledon), but never managed to win one. She better went to Mima Jausovec (at the time Yugoslavian, born in Maribor, now Slovenia), just 1.60 meters tall and who managed to win the Roland Garros in 1977; in the period considered (from 1980 onwards) she returned to the last act in Paris also in 1983, but on the other side there was Chris Evert, lady of red for 15 years.
In 1990, however, it was the turn of Zina Garrison reaching the maximum: final at Wimbledon with a height of 1.64 meters for a player who initially did not have an easy life (a brief period of bulimia after the loss of her mother). In 1990, however, she had to clash with Martina Navratilova for the ninth and last time on the lawns of the Championships. In the end, Dominika Cibulkova. The Slovakian, famous for her extremely aggressive tennis despite her 1.61m height, was able to reach the quarterfinals in all the Slams, dance among the greats successfully for two decades and, in 2014, reach the final of the Australian Open, where however he found perhaps the best Na Li ever. For her, however, there was also the great satisfaction of the WTA Finals in 2016.
