No less an authority on clay-court tennis than Chris Evert thinks her record of seven French Open championships could be surpassed by Iga Swiatek. “Absolutely,” Evert, a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, said in a phone interview.

“Iga is a player on a mission. She’s more focused. She doesn’t get upset at all when she’s losing. She just has all the ingredients to be a champion. She really does. She checks all the boxes—the intangibles and the tangibles.”