For all the 128 players spanning the globe to have entered the French Open main draw this year, the women’s quarter-final line-up ended up concentrated in an incredibly small corner of eastern Europe. One Pole, one Romanian, two Ukrainians, and the remaining half of the competitors from either Russia or Belarus. Those four are represented in official branding by a blank white rectangle, a flag that does not exist and tries to blend into obscurity, but which cannot be whitewashed out of the conversation.
This women’s Roland Garros has been dominated by the Russian war in Ukraine and the ever-widening chasm between players from the two nations, and between Ukrainians and Belarusians.
