Defending champion Maria Sharapova threw everything she had at world no.1 Serena Williams, hoping that something would stick, but the top seed was just too good for her, as she record her first French Open title triumph after having gone 11 years of failing to get beyond the semi-finals, in two extremely close and tight sets 6-4, 6-4.

Sharapova’s dismal record against Serena Williams, in which she has failed to win a match against the American since 2004 made all tennis fans fear the same outcome , prior to the contest. Would the 2013 French Open final end in an anti-climax with Serena Williams bouncing her Russian opponent out like she had done in the past?

Both 4th seed David Ferrer and 6th seed Jo Wilfried Tsonga were chasing records and lifelong dreams in today’s semi-final match. Tsonga was attempting to become the first French player in 30 years to win the title while David Ferrer was trying to reach his first Grand Slam final in his 13 year long career.

Nerves got the better off Tsonga while the Spaniard was able to keep his in check to perform on the big stage and that allowed him to see off the Frenchman in straight sets 6-1, 7-6(3), 6-2 to set up an all Spanish final against defending champion Rafael Nadal on Sunday.

Defending champion Rafael Nadal made a return to the Roland Garros final for the 8th time in 9 appearances after outlasting world no.1 Novak Djokovic in a nail biting and topsy turvy 5 set semi-final  that lasted an epic 4 hours and 37 minutes, fighting back from a break down in the final set to win 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 9-7.

The 35th meeting between the two great rivals got off to a great start for Novak Djokovic. He found his rhythm almost immediately while the ‘King Of Clay’ looked a bit unsure of his movement. Still, Nadal was able to keep up with the top seed to take the match to 3-3 on serve. After that, things changed. The Spaniard found his game and broke Djokovic’s serve for a 4-3 lead which he extended further to take the first set 6-4 after 51 tense minutes.

The second of two women's semi-finals saw the top seed, Serena Williams, in action on centre court. Williams would face last year’s runner up Sara Errani, for a place in Saturday's French Open final. Serena had a 5-0 head to head against Errani but since the Italian is a clay court specialist there was a chance that she could challenge the top seed, who was on a 29 match winning streak.

Unfortunately, that was not the case as the world no.1 turned up on court in truly astonishing from and wasted no time in her 46 minute demolishing of her 5th seeded opponent serving up a bagel and a breadstick to move into her 20th Slam final.

In the first of the two women's semi-finals, defending champion Maria Sharapova took on first time French Open semi-finalist Victoria Azarenka. The Azarenka-Sharapova rivalry is one of the more competitive and hard fought ones in women’s tennis over the past couple of years. 2012 was the breakout year in this rivalry and the two ladies have met 6 times since. Azarenka got the better of her Russian opponent 4 of those times to improve the career head to head to 7-5 in her favour.

Coming in to this year’s edition of the French Open, the odds were more or less evenly split with the slight edge going to Sharapova as a result of her improved clay court game and 2012 win at the French Open.

This year’s French Open has been all about Serena Williams and her career best consecutive match winning streak. She has beaten everyone on the WTA Tour over the few couple of months including the two women most likely to challenge her for this year’s title. Her opponent today though Svetlana Kuzentsova was a bit of an anomaly, being the only unseeded woman in the quarter-finals.

Even so, the 2009 champion challenged the top seed and gave the world no.1 her first real test of the tournament before Williams regained form and momentum to crawl her way back from 0-2 down in the final set to complete a topsy turvy 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 victory.