In winning her first major, Muguruza used her powerful groundstrokes to keep No. 1 Williams off-balance and overcame signs of nerves in the form of nine double-faults to pull off the surprise.
After dropping her first set of the tournament, Garbine Muguruza won 14 straight en route to the championship. AP Photo/David Vincent
Muguruza also managed to deal with Williams' dangerous serve, breaking three consecutive times from late in the first set to early in the second en route to beating Williams for the second time in three years at Roland Garros. In 2014, she handed Williams the worst loss of her Grand Slam career with a 6-2, 6-2 victory in the second round.
After letting four match points slip away in the penultimate game, Muguruza served out the match at love, punctuated by a high lob that caught the baseline as Williams watched.
The winning shot drew a smile from Williams' face and she applauded Muguruza, who put her face in her hands and fell on her back in the red clay of Court Philippe Chatrier as her coach Sam Sumyk jumped from his chair and raised both arms in the air.
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"She has a bright future, obviously," said Williams, who at 34 is 12 years older than her Spanish opponent. "She knows how to play on the big stage and ... clearly, she knows how to win Grand Slams."
Muguruza, who lost to Williams in the 2015 final at Wimbledon, became the first Spanish woman to win a Grand Slam title since Arantxa Sanchez Vicario won the last of her three French Open crowns in 1998.
"I can't explain with words what this day means to me," Muguruza said after the match. "You work all your life to get here."
For Williams, whose timing was not exactly right much of the afternoon, Saturday's loss delayed yet again her pursuit of tying Graf record in the Open era, which began in 1968. Margaret Court holds the all-time record of 24.
"She doesn't wake up every morning thinking about it. That's for sure," said Patrick Mouratoglou, Williams' coach. "The pressure of leaving an indelible mark on history is incomparable."
Said Williams: "The only thing I can do is just keep trying."
Williams got No. 21 at Wimbledon in 2015, her fourth major title in a row. But since then, she has been beaten in the semifinals at the US Open by Roberta Vinci in September, in the final at the Australian Open by Angelique Kerber in January, and now by Muguruza.
The loss, which came in her fourth match in four days after rain played havoc with the schedule this week, also ended her 14-match winning streak at Roland Garros.
Muguruza became just the fifth different woman to defeat Williams in a Grand Slam final, joining Kerber, Samantha Stosur, Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams -- who beat her sister twice.
This year's visit to Paris hardly could have started off more inauspiciously for Muguruza: She lost the very first set she played in the tournament, against 38th-ranked Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. ESPN
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