The match seemed destined to be great. Two of the best players on the WTA tour, who have never won a Grand Slam in singles (yet), faced off when Elina Svitolina took on Belinda Bencic in the 2026 French Open fourth round. The match would meet its high expectations.
Bencic took the first set 6-4. When Svitolina landed her first serve, she took most of the points, but the problem was that the Ukrainian wasn’t landing a massive percentage of those serves (just 59 percent), and Bencic crushed Svitolina’s second serve, taking seven of the 11 points.
That led her to getting a second break, which is what she would need as she was broken once herself. Still, the set was so tight that no one would have thought the match had no chance to go three sets.
Elina Svitolina defeats Belinda Bencic in the fourth round at the 2026 French Open
In set two, Svitolina flipped the script while raising her level. She was overall the more aggressive player, taking more chances and having those pay off in the bigger points. She was the one who smashed her opponent’s second serve, winning seven of the 12 points. As the set grew old, the Ukrainian was clearly gaining momentum, though Svitolina had a bit of a hiccup late by being broken.
No doubt existed as far as who was playing better overall, however. It was the seventh-seed, who was playing arguably the best stretch of tennis of her career in 2026. She would be a real threat to win the French Open if she could just get past Bencic.
Bencic was becoming angrier at herself, too, missing shots that she made with relative ease in the first set. Her confidence would not have been helped by being broken in the second game of the third set, and then again in the fourth. Meanwhile, Svitolina was suddenly holding with ease.
The set grew to 5-0 in seemingly a matter of moments, and barring something shocking and unforeseen, Elina Svitolina was going to walk into the quarterfinals of Roland Garros, where she would surprisingly play another Ukrainian, Marta Kotsyuk. Kotsyuk stunned Iga Swiatek, a four-time winner at the French Open, in the fourth round 7-5, 6-1.
The final set ended up being a whitewash. Bencic wouldn’t win a game. Svitolina’s late-match dominance served notice to the rest of the WTA field at Roland Garros that she is in the event to win it.
