Three days after brandishing her first title on the main WTA tour in Brazil, French teenager Sarah Rakotomanga came back down to earth on Wednesday in Portugal with a straight sets defeat in the second round at the Caldas da Rainha Open.
On Sunday, the Madagascar-born 19-year-old overcame Janice Tjen from Indonesia 6-3, 6-4 to claim the Sao Paulo Open.
Rakotomanga, ranked at 214 in the WTA lists, went into the showdown against the 23-year-old world number 130 as the underdog. But she prevailed in 82 minutes.
The points harvested from the triumph at the WTA 250 tournament catapulted her 83 places up the rankings ladder to a career high of 131.
Rakotomanga confirmed her new status on Tuesday in Portugal with a three-set win over the Swiss player Valentina Ryser ranked at 252 in the world.
Overwhelmed at the start of the match, Rakotomanga recovered her poise to advance 1-6, 6-2, 6-3.
But on Wednesday, Rakotomanga went down to the 23-year-old American Carol Young Suh Lee. The world number 270 won 6-2, 6-3 to advance to Thursday's quarter-final.
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Breakthrough victory
"It's a great feeling," Rakotomanga told the French sports newspaper L'Equipe a few hours after her win on the Quadra Central Maria Esther Bueno at the Sao Paulo Open.
"The pressure is easing a little," she added. "I hadn't won a trophy and I told myself I needed one before the end of the year. Now it's done, it's really great. Some players never manage it."
It was Rakotomanga's fourth final of the year. In February, in Macon, central France, she went down in straight sets to Sinja Kraus from Austria.
That defeat on hard courts was followed by a loss on clay in the Burundian capital Bujumbura in March. There was another setback on clay in June at the Biarritz Open.
"After losing in Biarritz, I wrote on Instagram: ‘Third final this season ... Still chasing that trophy’", said Rakotomanga.
"This time, it's the real deal. I lifted the cup and what's more, it's a WTA 250! It's crazy, I can't believe it."
Rakotomanga took up tennis when she lived in Montpelier via the Fête le Mur charity set up by the French former tennis star Yannick Noah. She was noticed by the coach Teddy Andrianjafritrimo who provided the initial guidance.
Since winning the French under-18 national championships in September 2023, she has been under the aegis of Thomas Delgado.
"Sarah respects all players, but she is not overawed by anyone," Delgado told broadcaster Eurosport. "She knows she is good enough to compete against these players: it's just that, until now, she hadn't played them much, so she hadn't proven it.
"I think she took this title in her stride with great calm and composure."
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New status in France
Rakotomanga's rise in the WTA rankings places her sixth in the French pecking order.
French Open semi-finalist Lois Boisson leads the pack in 49th position while Elsa Jacquemot's run to the semi-final at the Guadalajara Open in Mexico pushed her up to second at 62 in the world.
Varvara Gracheva at 80, Léolia Jeanjean at 94 and Diane Parry at 101 are France's other best placed players in the world lists.
The paucity of French female players occupying the upper reaches of the rankings or consistently challenging for the circuit's most prestigious prizes has left French tennis supremos on the back foot.
Gilles Moretton, the head of the French Tennis Federation, acknowledged there were not enough French players vying for the Grand Slam trophies.
He said just before the French Open in July that there were prospects in the generation who were in their early teens.
That optimism was expressed before Boisson's surge to the last four at the Roland Garros Stadium.
Though she claimed the Hamburg Open in July, Boisson has failed to make inroads at the two Grand Slam tournaments after the French Open.
She lost in the first qualifying round for Wimbledon and was eliminated in the first round at the US Open where Parry reached the third round.
