Ksenia Efremova Targets Roland-Garros Run After Junior Title
Ksenia Efremova wants Roland-Garros 2026 to be more than a debut. The 17-year-old said she wants to go far and try to do what Loïs Boisson did last year as she prepares for her first senior Grand Slam and first main draw on the women’s tour.
“I want to go far,” Efremova said, adding that her aim is to win matches and keep building on the confidence she carried into Paris. She was ranked beyond 600th place on the WTA tour, yet she arrives with a junior major title already on her resume and a first-round match against Sorana Cîrstea.
Efremova Sets Her Paris Target
“Do as well as I can and, of course, win matches. Honestly, I really want to go far, show everyone I’m really capable of it, and tell myself I’m sure of myself. I’m full of confidence, I can do it. Plus, playing Roland-Garros, it’s home, it’s France. I’m going to try to do what Loïs Boisson did last year – it wasn’t bad, honestly. But my aim is to play good matches, just play well,” she said.
That ambition lands in a difficult spot. Cîrstea is her first opponent at a senior Grand Slam, and Efremova has not yet beaten a seeded-level player in the kind of setting she is stepping into this week. Her first Paris main draw is not a free pass into the tournament; it is the first test of whether the confidence she describes can survive the pace and pressure of Grand Slam tennis.
Australian Open Junior Title
Efremova’s season has already carried one big milestone. She won the Australian Open junior title on 1 February, becoming the second French player ever to win that event and the first player to win a junior major since Elsa Jacquemot at Roland-Garros in 2020.
Her next stop came quickly. Two weeks later, she was due to resume at the WTA 125 in Les Sables-d’Olonne on a wildcard from Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, but she injured her back in the warm-up and withdrew 30 minutes before her match against Mona Barthel. The setback cost her two and a half months of competition and delayed the transition from junior success to senior routine.
Rain On Court Suzanne-Lenglen
Efremova said she had practiced heavily on Court Suzanne-Lenglen in the days before Roland-Garros because of rain in Paris. She also said she loves practice matches and winning them, above all, a small window into the rhythm she has been trying to find after the injury interruption.
Since returning in April at Madrid qualifying, she has mixed one clear win with several heavy losses. She beat Lulu Sun 6-4, 7-5 before falling to Alycia Parks 1-6, 6-7, then lost to Moyuka Uchijima at Saint-Malo, Tamara Korpatsch at the Trophée Clarins, and Oleksandra Oliynykova in Strasbourg qualifying. Oliynykova was world No. 66 at the time.
Top 100 Barrier For Efremova
Those results leave a clear number on the page: Efremova has played four Top 100 opponents in her career and lost all four matches. That is the friction point in her Paris bid. She has the junior title, the French passport she received in 2023, and the confidence to say she can go far, but Roland-Garros is where the jump from promise to proof begins.
The first round against Cîrstea will show whether her best level can travel from practice courts and junior events into a senior Grand Slam main draw. For a player still ranked beyond 600th place, the path she is asking for starts with one match in Paris and the kind of upset that can change a season fast.
