Mary Pierce buried her head in her towel, regally straightened her back, blessed herself and kissed the rosary around her neck. Her quiet words were an offering of thanks as her career in the last year finally found a groove, her head a sense of peace and her tennis a balance. No longer is the game life itself.
In the beating of Conchita Martinez 6-2 7-5 for a prize of £402,800, Pierce has finally become a survivor-of her notorious father Jim, her jangling nerves, a doubting public and now two weeks at Roland Garros.
There were few moments during Saturday's one-sided contest when the old, flaky Pierce threatened to emerge from the dominant character on court.
When she lost here in 1994 one of her main worries was the fact that she would have had to have made a speech in French after the final. The thought was eating at her even during the match. "The whole thing made me nervous," she said.
Four years on and stability has noticeably crept in to her game. The recent reaffirmation of her Catholic faith and the influence of her fiance, the Cleveland Indians baseball player Roberto Alomar, are undoubtedly an important part of the background.
Alomar was not in Paris for this, her second career Grand Slam, because of a major league commitment in the United States. But with or without him, there had always been a nimbus of uncertainty surrounding the 25-year-old, who got the much stronger start against a clearly nervous Martinez.
The Spaniard, a winner at Wimbledon in 1994 against the ageing Martina Navratilova, lobbed the first serve of the match at 102 kilometres per hour, a speed regularly surpassed in Summer League tennis at Carrickmines. Although Martinez held serve in that first game it was a set in which every service game was threatened, Pierce holding with ease and breaking twice for a convincing 6-2 lead.
The second set was where the game wavered: Pierce conceded the first break with a double fault before twice coming back for 7-5. Martinez might have put more pressure on had she converted one of two points to go 3-0 up but when that disappeared her momentum was further dented by a code violation for coaching from the stand by her doubles partner Patricia Tarabini.
Pierce, an advocate of creatine and of pumping iron, was simply too powerful, dictating forcefully with her ground stokes from the back court and moving smartly between points, almost hurrying her opponent.
"When I start taking a long time between points that is when I tend to let my mind wander or get a little nervous," Pierce explained.
Pierce, who moved to France when she was 13 because the United States Tennis Association (USTA) refused to allow her father to be involved in coaching his daughter, now resides in Florida, but she was claimed by a 16,000 crowd which included French prime minister Lionel Jospin.
Now looking towards Wimbledon, Pierce is more hopeful.
"It's a tough tournament - bad bounces every time the ball hits the ground. It's very, very different tennis. It's just something that I have to get used to," said the new champion.
Rounding off a perfect weekend, the champion then teamed up with the world number one Martina Hingis and carried off the women's doubles championship, beating Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez 6-2, 6-4.
