For the men, there is one overwhelming favorite, with the field playing catchup to try to unseat him. For the women, the top four players in the world rankings are looking to separate themselves from those just below, who have perhaps more realistic chances of springing a surprise than their ATP Tour counterparts.
But whoever lifts the trophy is never the only storyline at a major, and nor should it be. There are the players who thrive on their home courts; the rising talents taking their first steps onto the biggest stages, and the statesmen and stateswomen of the sport who are here for one last hurrah.
In that spirit, here are 30 players to watch at the French Open this year, 15 men and 15 women. Some of them are title contenders. Some of them are dark horses. Some of them are doing one last lap of honor. And one of them is Corentin Moutet.
On y va: It’s almost time.
Aryna Sabalenka
Aryna Sabalenka is a dominant world No. 1 and a regular presence in Grand Slam finals, but she arrives at the French Open with a point to prove.
She has played just six clay-court matches in the lead up to Roland Garros, losing two of them to players outside the world’s top 25, and in the most recent of those, against Sorana Cîrstea at the Italian Open, she received treatment for a lower-back injury. The Cîrstea defeat came in the third round of the Italian Open, making it Sabalenka’s earliest tournament loss for 15 months.
And yet, like Novak Djokovic, she is a banker when it comes to delivering at the majors. She has reached the semifinals or better in 12 of her last 13, with the only blemish in large part down to a stomach upset she suffered against Mirra Andreeva at the 2024 French Open.
A major factor in this consistency is the finesse that Sabalenka has added to her game, making her far less one-dimensional and prone to upsets if her Plan A of overpowering her opponents isn’t working. Sabalenka demonstrated how potent her drop shot has become at last year’s French Open, where she reached her first non-hard court Slam final.
Coco Gauff had her number that day on a blustery Paris afternoon, but if Sabalenka can stay fit then she will be the favorite to go one better in 2026 — if she can overcome a problem she’s had with delivering when she reaches those finals. She has lost three of her last four.
Elena Rybakina
Already a Grand Slam winner this year, Elena Rybakina is on the short list of favorites to win the title. She has never made it past the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, but Rybakina is having that good of a season.
She is one of the hardest hitters in the game and wields the biggest serve on tour, but a straightforward ball-basher Rybakina is not. What sets her apart, other than her serve, is her bravery and precision on critical points. She rips winners on break points without blinking — and is so even-tempered, that it seems she does everything without blinking. She often neutralizes players who have more feel at the net, and are better than her in the transition game, by pinning them to the baseline.
Rybakina ended the 2025 season with an 11-match win streak, including a victory in the WTA Tour Finals.
From then until March, when she fell in a tight final against Aryna Sabalenka at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Rybakina has buzzsawed her way through the field.
That, as well as the WTA title she picked up on indoor red clay at the Stuttgart Tennis Grand Prix, gives her a bit more momentum heading into this year’s French Open. She lost to Jasmine Paolini, the eventual finalist, in a three-set quarterfinal match here in 2024 and to Iga Świątek, the four-time French Open champion, in a three-set quarterfinal match in 2025. This year appears to be one of her opportunities to go further.
Iga Świątek
A four-time French Open champion who looks to be finding her feet again on clay at just the right time.
After a mixed start to the season, Świątek parted ways with coach Wim Fissette in March and brought in Francisco Roig, a long-time former coach of Rafael Nadal. Świątek grew up idolizing Nadal, and has been the closest thing to a WTA equivalent of the great Spaniard since Belgium’s Justine Henin in the mid-2000s. Two years ago, Świątek became the first woman to win three straight French Open titles since Henin in 2007, but she has not won a title on clay since. At Roland Garros last year, she lost the final set of her semifinal against Aryna Sabalenka 6-0, after constant pressure on her serve told all at once.
At last week’s Italian Open, Świątek appeared as comfortable on clay as she has been in a while. She was far more patient in her point construction, resisting the urge to go for too much too quickly — as has become an issue over the last year or so. Her forehand looked close to being back to its potent best.
Even in what has not been her best period, Świątek still arrives in Paris as the reigning Wimbledon champion and with more French Open titles than the rest of the women’s field combined.
The key could be the effectiveness of her remodeled serve: The shot was a liability against Sabalenka in last year’s semifinals, but then powered Świątek to that Wimbledon title a month later. It’ll need to be on point if she’s to claim a fifth Roland Garros crown.
Coco Gauff
Gauff is the defending women’s singles champion at Roland Garros. She made the Italian Open final last week, just as she did in 2025. She has rounded into form over the past month. Her serve is mostly stable.
It will surprise nobody if Gauff lifts the trophy again. It will also surprise no one if she loses in the first round.
Such a defeat is not wholly likely, however. The higher, slower bounce of clay compared with other surfaces buys her time to set up her forehand, which is usually the keystone of a player’s game. For Gauff of late, it has been an albatross, with her footwork and spacing on the shot leaving her out of position and hopping onto her back foot too often.
That extra time helps her, because the book on beating Gauff will always include attacking her forehand. If her opponents can’t do that as much as they would like, she can use her backhand, her foot speed and her defense to draw errors out of them and frustrate them into losing.
Frustration has been a watchword for Gauff in recent weeks. She has spoken of off-court troubles bleeding into her game and into her on-court attitude — but she still produced comeback win after comeback win in Rome. That’s what makes her a favorite for the title in Paris.
Jessica Pegula
One of the cleanest hitters in the game, Jessica Pegula is such a consistent presence in the late stages of tournaments that it’s easy to take her for granted. She’s also one of the most outspoken and informed voices advocating for player welfare and better prize money, meaning her news conferences are often as much about the state of the sport as they are the state of her tennis game.
That game might be the best it has ever been. Pegula is looking to build on her strongest start to the season in years at the French Open, after making the semifinals of the Australian Open for the first time and picking up two WTA titles already. The 32-year-old American is a pure ball striker who does the most damage when she’s hitting from the back of the court, and when she’s moving well, it can be like playing against a brick wall.
But when she’s actually playing on red brick, Pegula has something to prove. She’s never made it past the quarterfinals at Roland Garros. With the majority of her playing days realistically behind her, Pegula is on a mission lately to squeeze every last ounce of potential from her career.
Reaching the latter stages of the French Open would be a big milestone, because she’s never been there before and red clay is far from Pegula’s favorite surface. But in a year where there are so many strong contenders in the mix for the women’s title, it’ll be interesting to see how Pegula asserts herself in a strong field.
Amanda Anisimova
It was at the French Open seven years ago that Amanda Anisimova announced herself to the wider tennis world by reaching the semifinals as a raw 17-year-old.
A lot has happened since, including a nine-month mental-health break in 2023. Since returning to tennis, Anisimova has embarked on an ascent toward its very top. Last year, she reached the final of both the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, losing both in straight sets. She avenged the first, a humiliating 6-0, 6-0 defeat to Iga Świątek, by beating the former world No. 1 in New York less than eight weeks later.
That was a sign of Anisimova’s character, as well as a showcase of her ability to hit anyone off the court when she is on. In the Wimbledon semifinals, she even managed to outhit Sabalenka. The backhand is the money shot, one of the finest on the WTA Tour, and she thrives on the high bounce clay courts offer when the weather is warm enough.
Her durability also improved hugely in 2025, helped by hiring physiotherapist Shadi Soleymani.
A stellar year led Anisimova to a career-high ranking of No. 3 in January, but since reaching the Australian Open quarterfinals that month, she has been dealing with a wrist injury. Anisimova last competed at the Miami Open in March, and hasn’t played a single clay-court match going into Roland Garros.
Elina Svitolina
Elina Svitolina has looked like the most unflappable player in the women’s game recently, dating from the decision she made near the end of last season to take an extra month off. She knew she was burned out, and the break worked.
Svitolina has the fifth-best winning percentage on the WTA Tour this year and has lifted two trophies, including at the Italian Open, the prestigious tournament held right before Roland Garros. In Rome, she beat the world Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on her path to the title.
Svitolina’s steadiness on court comes from hard-earned self-assurance. At 31, she’s enjoying a second career bloom after returning from maternity leave in 2023, a period of on-court success that she’s balanced with a non-stop, off-court mission to raise money for and uplift the people of her native Ukraine after its invasion by Russia.
Svitolina has enough trust in her game and guile to take down some of the world’s best tennis players, but at her core, she’s a workhorse. She isn’t the hardest hitter on tour, but she’s strong enough to keep pace with Elena Rybakina. She isn’t the best mover on tour, but she’s fluid enough to out-maneuver Coco Gauff at times. She rarely loses to players seeded below her in tournaments.
Her strong play this season and her win in Rome make her among the top contenders for the French Open title. The only thing that makes her slightly less of a favorite than Rybakina, Iga Świątek or Gauff is experience: Svitolina has never reached a Grand Slam final before. But there’s no better moment to cross that threshold than this year’s tournament, where her husband, the French tennis icon Gaël Monfils, is playing the final French Open of his career.
Mirra Andreeva
Mirra Andreeva has done enough winning this year to put herself on the longlist of title hopefuls in Paris. At 19, she’s the least experienced, but it wouldn’t be a surprise for her first Grand Slam title to come at Roland Garros — it’s the only major semifinal she has reached. She should arrive for this year’s French Open feeling confident, too: She’s won two titles this year, including one on indoor clay in April, and she made the Madrid Open final last month.
Andreeva’s game suits the dirt partly because of how fluid a mover she is. She doesn’t mind engaging in long rallies and excels at changing direction mid-point, using the whole court to exhaust her opponents.
She combines that with a big, powerful serve that’s had tennis watchers excited since she made her Grand Slam debut at 16 – with a run to the third round at the 2023 French Open – because her youth combined with all that natural ability means she’s got a high ceiling.
Andreeva’s youth also means she’s got a ways to go with the mental side of her game. She cursed the crowd at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells while walking off court after a second-round loss earlier this year; she shouted at her coaching team, “I’m not a champion, I’m not a champion. I will lose. I will lose. I choke,” during a match in Madrid. She won.
Victoria Mboko
This time last year, Mboko had just come through qualifying to play her first main draw at a Grand Slam. She ended up making the third round, and announcing a rise that had been in the post for much longer than her time at Roland Garros.
Mboko, then 18, made it to last year’s French Open on the back of relentlessly winning on the World Tennis Tour, the third rung of professional tennis. That relentlessness proved a reliable indicator of her future prospects: she arrives at this year’s French Open as a top-10 seed.
The Canadian hasn’t played much on clay this year. She had to get her wisdom teeth pulled, which set back at the start of clay season, before a gastrointestinal illness forced her to withdraw from the Italian Open. But her ability to shapeshift through matches, defending and waiting one moment before attacking and accelerating the next, means she has the potential to be a serious force if she can get through the first couple of rounds in Paris.
Mboko does not overthink tennis. That has been her superpower in her career so far, carrying her to a WTA 1000 title at the Canadian Open last August, one rung below the Grand Slams, and to the top-10 berth she now enjoys.
If she can play herself into clay form this coming week, she will be dangerous by the tournament’s middle weekend.
Karolína Muchová
If Alexander Zverev is the best player in the current men’s game to never win a Grand Slam title, then Karolína Muchová might be the most talented in the women’s to never lift one.
When healthy, Muchová, 29, is among the most compelling players in tennis. She floats. She slices. She weaves rallies before ending them with an explosion from her racket.
Until this year, Muchová, a French Open finalist in 2023, did not have the big title that her talent deserved. Then she won the WTA 1000 Qatar Open and made the final of the Stuttgart Tennis Grand Prix in Germany. There was some grit to go with the ethereal tennis that she does like no one else on the tour can.
But Muchová, like so many players blessed with great talents, has had to manage her body in order to have the opportunity to harness them. She skipped the Madrid Open, and then lost her opening match at the Italian Open too. She is coming into the French Open cold. But if the draw breaks her way, and she can find some rhythm in her opening matches, then truly anything can happen.
Marta Kostyuk
For a long while, Marta Kostyuk looked set to be defined as a player who couldn’t quite get over the line when it mattered most. Or as someone who couldn’t live with the hype of being a precociously talented youngster (the Ukrainian, now 23, reached the Australian Open third round as a 15-year-old in 2018).
But since starting to work regularly with a therapist after the Russian invasion of her home country four years ago, Kostyuk has been better able to separate her sense of self-worth from her results.
After a tricky start to 2026, Kostyuk has well and truly hit her stride. She won back-to-back clay events, the Rouen Open and the Madrid Open. The latter is a WTA 1000 event, just below the Grand Slams, and Kostyuk celebrated her first title at that level with an on-court backflip, a skill honed while learning acrobatics in her youth.
She skipped the Italian Open after winning in Madrid to rest, and arrives in Paris in the form of her life, having won only one career title prior to that recent double.
But Roland Garros has not been a happy hunting ground. Since reaching the fourth round in 2021, Kostyuk has won just one match in four visits. Having shown off her mastery of clay, Kostyuk now has to prove it on the surface’s biggest stage of all.
Sorana Cîrstea
Sorana Cîrstea, 36, is putting together one of the great send-off seasons tennis has ever seen. The history of the sport is littered with stars who have tried to play on too long, chasing the glory that propelled them in their younger years.
Cîrstea is having none of that. In what will be her final season as a professional, she has achieved a career-high ranking of world No. 18, beaten a world No. 1 (Aryna Sabalenka) for the first time, and won a title in her home country of Romania, at the Transylvania Open.
Cîrstea maintains that none of this will mean she reconsiders her decision to retire. While she is still around this year’s French Open, she will be a nightmare draw for anyone who crosses her. Good thing, for the cream of the clay-court crop, that her rich vein of form means she will be seeded.Whatever she does results-wise, Cïrstea will start the event with a smaller number next to her name than any she has seen during her two decades as a professional tennis player. That grants the kind of confidence that can lead to just about anything happening.
Hailey Baptiste
Hailey Baptiste hasn’t won a WTA Tour title or made a deep run in a Grand Slam in her career, but fans shouldn’t let her results sway them from watching her play.
Her all-court game sings on clay, where she makes the most of her heavy forehand and employs the impressive versatility she honed at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., the same club where her longtime friend, Frances Tiafoe, grew up. Tiafoe’s twin brother, Franklin, is one of Baptiste’s coaches.
There’s hardly a shot she doesn’t have, and when she’s moving well and playing boldly, she can be dangerous. Fans saw that when she beat world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka on red clay in a three-set thriller at the Madrid Open in April.
Baptiste now looks to back up her best result at a Grand Slam: The fourth round of last year’s French Open. She’ll open her tournament against an equally crafty Barbora Krejčíková in what should be one of the more entertaining early matches.
Zheng Qinwen
Zheng Qinwen has become one of tennis’ most popular stars since she broke through with a run to the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open in 2023. China’s best singles player since Li Na, Zheng appeals to a massive fanbase with her infectious personality, sense of humor, love of karaoke and, of course, an exciting tennis game.
She has sterling credentials at Roland Garros, just not the French Open. She beat Donna Vekić to win gold at the Paris Olympics in 2024, to bring China its first Olympic singles medal in tennis. That match was a good primer on what makes Zheng so successful.
She has a heavy forehand, a powerful serve and couples all that force with shape and slice that work well on red clay and hard courts, where she can alter the height and pace of her shots to knock an opponent out of rhythm.
Zheng’s Olympic gold was her career peak so far, sandwiched between her first Grand Slam final — she lost the 2024 Australian Open final to Aryna Sabalenka — and her second trip to the U.S. Open quarterfinals. The 23-year-old returns to the French Open with good memories but perhaps tempered expectations. Zheng made it to the quarterfinals in Paris last year, but has missed the two most recent Grand Slams as she recovers from elbow surgery last summer.
Loïs Boisson
A fairytale run at last year’s French Open saw Boisson become only the third player since 1980 to reach the semifinals in their first appearance at a Grand Slam. She also became the first Frenchwoman to reach the last four at Roland Garros since Marion Bartoli in 2011.
Boisson did all of this when ranked No. 361 in the world, and just four months into a comeback from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee ligament tear.
That run provided her with a platform to really have a go at the WTA Tour, but 12 months later, she returns to Paris with more uncertainty over her fitness.
She won her first WTA title at the Hamburg Open last July, cracking the world’s top 50 for the first time, but was then out for almost seven months from late September to the recent Madrid Open with arm and leg injuries.
Boisson has since spoken about how hard she found the rehabilitation period this time around, and she will be desperate to rebuild her career at the site of, so far, her greatest triumph.
A sub-plot will be whether such a popular women’s home player will be given the night slot on Court Philippe-Chatrier that is almost solely reserved for men’s matches. Last year, the tournament was accused of declining a request from broadcaster Amazon Prime to have her fourth-round match against Jessica Pegula played then.
Jannik Sinner
Jannik Sinner winning tournaments is one of the surest things in sports in 2026.
Barring injury or force majeure, the world No. 1 is an overwhelming favorite to be in the French Open men’s singles final on June 7, playing to become the 10th man to complete the career Grand Slam.
Even before his great rival Carlos Alcaraz withdrew from the tournament with a wrist injury, Sinner had been barreling toward Roland Garros. He enters the tournament with a 29-match win streak, a 36-2 record this year and five titles already won.
Huge groundstrokes make up the bedrock of the 24-year-old Italian’s game. He wields the most devastating backhand on the men’s tour and keeps opponents under constant pressure with the consistent power and speed of his shots off both wings.
Fueled to evolve by Alcaraz beating him here last year in an epic, and then at the U.S. Open, Sinner has improved his feel in matches this year and is confident enough to work in feathery drop shots at critical moments that add shading to his game.
The only nagging doubt about his chances of capturing the title? All the winning he has done to make them look near-certain. Playing a full clay-court season is one of the most taxing tasks in the sport, and Sinner’s management of his accumulated wear and tear will be crucial.
Anyone hoping to upset him at Roland Garros will be looking to the elements for help. A cold or rainy day in Paris can slow down courts enough to blunt some of Sinner’s speed. Heat may increase the likelihood of Sinner cramping enough for a willful opponent (say, Novak Djokovic) to outlast him physically. But to do that, they have to make him play more than three sets, and that might be the hardest task of all.
The other factor is pressure.. Sinner’s five-hour-and-29-minute loss to Alcaraz in last year’s final, when he held three championship points, was one of the most painful tennis can deliver.
Alexander Zverev
Alexander Zverev is probably the best men’s clay-court player in the world… who is not named Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic or Jannik Sinner.
Were he to end his career today, he would likely be the best men’s tennis player never to win a major, but if he is to do it, then a French Open without the injured Alcaraz may be one of his best opportunities.
He faced the Spaniard in the final here two years ago and lost in five sets, from 2-1 up. Then he went to the Australian Open at the start of 2025 and got to the final there, too. Sinner shellacked him. Last year at Roland Garros, Djokovic took him apart in the quarterfinals with a puppeteering display of drop shots.
Zverev’s serve, backhand and ability to extend points make him a brutal out over five sets. He is one of the most experienced players in the field when it comes to going deep at a major, but among that group, he is the least experienced in terms of actually getting over the line.
He wants to play with more aggressiveness and seize the moment, because he knows that his backboard tennis doesn’t work against the best. But is he healthy? Does he have too much baggage and psychological scar tissue?
He seemingly has no answers against Sinner, who has obliterated him at both the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells and the Madrid Open this season. But as the No. 2 seed in Alcaraz’s absence, he cannot meet the Italian until the final. Who knows what might happen before then — including the possibility of Zverev’s troublesome back, which has been hampering him for the past couple of months, not allowing him to fully compete.
Novak Djokovic
He turned 39 just before the tournament. He has played four matches since the Australian Open final in early February. He is recovering from an arm injury. He was seemingly unwell at his last event.
He is second favorite for the French Open.
A damning indictment of the rest of the men’s field, yes, but also a testament to the extraordinary ability Djokovic has to lift himself when it really matters. Should he do so again in Paris then a record 25th Grand Slam title will be in reach.
The absence of Carlos Alcaraz with a wrist injury is huge here. Djokovic knows that at his age beating both the Spaniard and Jannik Sinner over best of five sets is borderline impossible. Djokovic beat the latter in the Australian Open semifinals earlier this year and led Alcaraz by a set in the final, before fading badly.
If Djokovic can stay fit he at least has a puncher’s chance. He is one of the finest clay-court players in history — the joint-second best in the men’s game with Björn Borg, three-time French Open champion Mats Wilander said during an interview two years ago. Djokovic would have likely won many more than his three French Open titles were it not for playing in the same era as 14-time winner and clay-court GOAT Rafael Nadal.
Last year in Paris, Djokovic schooled another excellent clay-courter, Alexander Zverev, in the quarterfinals. He then held his own against Sinner in the semifinals, despite a misleading straight-sets scoreline.
With no Alcaraz, he is expected to be the world No. 1’s main challenger over the next couple of weeks.
Ben Shelton
Ben Shelton arrives at this year’s French Open with an opportunity to make good on one of his big tennis ambitions.
Shelton, the 23-year-old hotshot from the U.S., is an outrageous athlete with a serve that he can blast one moment and twist and spin the next. He has speed, strength, quickness and agility – everything a tennis player needs to be good on clay.
He also has the appetite to be good on clay. The surface which has been a site of understandable apathy for American men the past two decades is, for Shelton, full of promise.
Lately though, he hasn’t been able to find it.
He lost his opening match at both the Madrid and Italian Opens, then his second at the Hamburg Open. His returning has made it difficult to create break points, and so if his service games aren’t quite right, he is in trouble.
At last year’s French Open, he took a set off Carlos Alcaraz in an honorable fourth-round loss. He won the third of four sets played — but he was also a point from winning the first in a tiebreak, before Alcaraz flipped it.
Shelton’s overarching goal is to always do better than he did last year. At Roland Garros this year, that would mean making the quarterfinals. If he shows up as the version of himself that has embraced clay like few of his compatriots can, he can do it. He just needs to find that version, somewhere, somehow.
Daniil Medvedev
Daniil Medvedev could do anything at the French Open.
He could lose in the first round, like he has two of the past three years at Roland Garros, and six times in nine tries. He could turn into the avowed clay hater that sometimes emerges this time of year, even though he is an Italian Open champion, the tournament which is the closest thing to the French Open when it comes to conditions.
Or, he could do what he did last week at that event, and prove that his blend of attritional, lungbusting groundstrokes and an occasionally laser-like serve is one of the very few formulae that have the potency and repeatability to trouble Jannik Sinner.
In Rome, Medvedev lost in three sets to the world No. 1 in the semifinals, but he also proved that after a miserable 2025, in which he lost his opening match at three of the four majors, he is feeling himself again.
This year, he reached the round of 16 at the Australian Open, lifted the Dubai Open trophy, and made the final of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. There, too, he made Sinner sweat, losing in two tiebreaks with the title on the line.
In Paris, the Medvedev mystery tour will continue. What will happen in Paris? He probably doesn’t know either.
Alexander Bublik
One of the most entertaining stories of last year’s French Open was Alexander Bublik’s run to the quarterfinals.
Bublik, a player who is phenomenally talented but lacked the motivation and focus to really make good on his many gifts, delivered the kind of sustained brilliance that he has often threatened but rarely delivered.
Entering the tournament as world No. 62, after losing motivation from reaching the world’s top 20 for the first time, he beat a top-10 seed in Alex de Minaur, having trailed two sets to love. That was a display of resilience.
The performance he produced to beat world No. 5 Jack Draper was something else altogether: A masterclass of mind-bending drop shots, bullet serves and fizzing forehands that left Draper, one of the standout players that year, utterly helpless.
Before the Draper match, Bublik had explained that he was not a typical athlete. “Right now, everybody is like robots, and they’re just crazy, crazy performance guys,” he said in a news conference.
“I’m the guy you can see having a nice time down the street in Paris in the evening before the match. Not to go crazy, but I’m social. I can skip the practice if I don’t feel like it. In my opinion, I’m super normal, and they make me feel different.”
Bublik was well beaten by Jannik Sinner in the quarterfinals, but has pushed on since last year’s Roland Garros and established himself as a top-10 player. He has a unique ability to combine power with trickshots, and has hit six underarm serves in a game on more than one occasion.
Ever a showman, he could just as easily bomb out in the first round as he could reach the latter stages.
Casper Ruud
Casper Ruud is no one’s first pick as an opponent at the French Open, but exactly how much of a threat he poses is a question mark. He’s a former world No. 2 with a stellar clay-court pedigree — he started training regularly at Rafael Nadal’s Spanish tennis academy in 2018 — and has reached three Grand Slam finals, two of which were at the French Open.
Yet Ruud, an affable 27-year-old Norwegian, has had spotty performances at the majors the past few years. His luck at Roland Garros has been particularly poor: He crumbled in the semifinals in 2024 thanks to a stomach parasite, and was eliminated in the second round last year while managing a knee injury.
When Ruud is healthy and in form, he’s a sight to behold on clay and hard courts. He’s a fantastic mover who runs down balls in the spirit of Nadal, his idol, but the bedrock of his game is blasting serves and forehands. The high bounce on clay courts plays into his strengths, and lessens the impact of his main limitation: Other players can hit the ball harder than him.
Reaching the final of the Italian Open should give Ruud confidence heading into Roland Garros, except for the fact that he lost the trophy to Jannik Sinner 6-4, 6-4 in a match routine enough that it felt like it belonged in the third round. The bright side? Ruud is on the opposite side of the French Open draw from Sinner, in Novak Djokovic’s quarter. Ruud beat the 24-time Grand Slam champion in their most recent meeting, on clay in 2024.
Arthur Fils
One of the most exciting young talents in men’s tennis returns to his home Grand Slam.
Arthur Fils is only 21, but in his short career he has done enough to suggest he has the firepower, the charisma and the tenacity to finally end France’s 43-year wait for a male Grand Slam champion.
At last year’s French Open, he produced a thrilling performance to defeat Jaume Munar on a frenzied Court Suzanne-Lenglen, but had to pull out of the tournament the next day with a stress fracture in his back.
The injury kept Fils out for most of the next eight months, until he began his comeback in February. Since then, Fils has reached the Qatar Open final and the Madrid Open and BNP Paribas Open semifinals. He also won the Barcelona Open, a 500-level event a couple of rungs below the Slams.
The form is not in question. The tweaked forehand is even more potent. The only real issue is an injury Fils suffered at the Italian Open a couple of weeks ago that forced him to retire after losing the first four games to Andrea Pellegrino. Fils said it was a hip problem afterward and has since played the injury down, writing on X last week that “I ran all the tests with the team and everything is clear.”
Fils has the fearlessness and weaponry to make any opponent worry, but he needs to prove he can win reliably in best-of-five-sets tennis without overexerting himself physically. He is yet to record a straight-sets victory at a major.
Learner Tien
In Michael Chang, who became the youngest man to win a major when he lifted the 1989 French Open trophy, Learner Tien has the best possible coach an American looking to make inroads on clay could wish for.
He also has the tennis to back that up. Tien, 20, does not rely on his serve or one huge groundstroke to blast opponents off the court. He pulls them into uncomfortable positions, using the geometry of tennis to maneuver his way into points. And then — bang — he whips a lefty forehand inside-out, or slams a backhand down the line.
Tien’s dexterity and movement also suit clay, but he is still figuring out how exactly to translate those natural skills into the learned ones that are necessary for success on the surface. Rafael Jódar thumped him 6-1, 6-4 at the Italian Open, but Tien beat Alexander Bublik to set up that match. At the Madrid Open, he lost at the first hurdle, before reaching the Geneva Open final by beating Bublik in a riveting last-four match.
Tien has never been past the first round at the French Open, so one win could be seen as a kind of victory. But like fellow lefty Ben Shelton, Tien wants his clay-court tennis to mean something more than an interlude between grass- and hard-court play. He has the tools, and the coach, to make that a reality.
Rafael Jódar
In the world of fashionable dark-horse picks for a French Open run, 19-year-old Jódar is straight from central casting.
He’s Spanish. He hits a massive ball. His name is Rafa … But he plays nothing like his illustrious namesake. Jódar treats the back of the court, which Rafael Nadal made his playground, like lava, crowding the baseline and sweeping forward into his shots like he can’t stand still.
With youth comes exuberance and rawness. He can still swat when he needs to probe, and probe when he needs to swat. His serve lacks the pop and cut that a player of his height should be able to rely on. His hot run of form in the clay-court events leading up to Roland Garros makes him a seed, which is a different kind of pressure from coming in as a teenage bundle of hype with little to protect.
Either way, he seems likely to make waves in the first week. His being seeded will have been greeted by the top players with a big sigh of relief, because a lab could not engineer more of a nightmare first-round opponent.
As it stands now, he should have a pretty gritty third-round match against a very good player. There’s a reason Sinner wanted to watch him live in Madrid and stayed up until 1 a.m. following one of his matches. Everyone in the field will know which half Jódar is in. He’s that player right now – young and raw and dangerous, and playing in a tournament with plenty of openings for anybody who gets hot. On recent evidence, he has every chance of being that player.
João Fonseca
What is more important for a rising talent: the ceiling or the floor?
That is the question that has been confronting anyone trying to figure out who of the 18-, 19- and 20-year-old talents on the ATP Tour has the best chance of reaching the top of the sport, and for 19-year-old Brazilian João Fonseca, he needs the answer to be ceiling.
Fonseca sits alongside Learner Tien, Rafael Jódar and Jakub Menšík in age, but so far, his peers have delivered more of the statement wins that are one measure of a player’s early promise. Tien’s game is more likely to upset a star on their first meeting; Menšík’s bullet serve can drag him into high-variance situations even if the rest of his game is not firing.
Fonseca, who suffered a chastening defeat to Jack Draper at last year’s tournament, is still developing his nimbleness and movement, especially on clay, and is also in a sticky patch of fading out in deciding sets. But his technical upside, especially on his detonator-forehand and backhand, makes the player he could be with some refinement more irresistible than any of his peers. In the meantime, he has to be the player he is now. A solid run on the Parisian clay would be a promising one.
Corentin Moutet
A player so unconventional that he can make even Alexander Bublik look like a conformist, Moutet’s matches are always a must-watch and never more so than at his home major.
Two years ago, he reached the fourth round after hitting 12 underarm serves in a four-set win against Sebastian Ofner. It was a frenzied atmosphere on Court Suzanne-Lenglen for his last-16 match, and Moutet rode the momentum and adulation to take a 5-0 first-set lead over Jannik Sinner.
He ultimately ran out of steam and lost in four sets, but it was a snapshot of the kind of entertainment and high-level tennis the diminutive, highly-skilled Frenchman can provide.
Others include a ludicrously chaotic match at the Madrid Open that same season against Shang Juncheng that included ball abuse from Moutet, drinking a spectator’s coffee and his racket flying out of his hand when serving in the final-set tiebreak.
Moutet often gives the impression that he is not amused by those around him during his matches, with run-ins with umpires all part of the experience. Likewise self-flagellation, which crossed a strange line right before Roland Garros when he pulled his shorts down after losing a point to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina at the Hamburg Open.
A low seed whose matches can frequently become a circus — especially in Paris — the world No. 32 is someone the big names will be keen to avoid.
Stefanos Tsitsipas
Once heralded as a member of the group who would carry the Big Three’s torch after they retired, Stefanos Tsitsipas has retreated from relevance at the Grand Slams in the past two years. Tsitsipas is a gifted all-court court player who speaks about playing on clay as if he’s reciting poetry, once describing sweeping a clay court as a “cleansing of the soul.” He even reached the 2021 French Open final, losing to Novak Djokovic in five sets after leading 2-0.
But the former world No. 3 hasn’t been as consistent over the past two years, exiting the past seven Grand Slams in the second round or earlier. His recent form has been rotten, and he is now closer to No. 100 than No. 1. He was placed in Sinner’s quarter of the draw for this French Open, meaning he’ll have to play better, and string together more matches than he has in a long time.
It will be intriguing to see if Tsitsipas is one of the group of players stuck between two transcendent generations in men’s tennis who will try to take advantage of the opportunity presented by Carlos Alcaraz’s injury withdrawal.
Stan Wawrinka
A final French Open for the 2015 men’s champion, who will retire at the end of the season, aged 41.
If it’s anything like his Australian Open farewell in January, the fans are in for a treat. Wawrinka rolled back the years to win a couple of matches in Melbourne before pushing the No. 9 seed Taylor Fritz in the third round.
Eleven years ago in Paris, the Pole recorded a sensational victory over a career-Grand-Slam-chasing Novak Djokovic. Wawrinka, with his picture-book single-handed backhand and — at the other end of the aesthetic spectrum — his red-white-and-gray plaid shorts, was a hugely popular champion. He hit 60 winners to Djokovic’s 30 that day and comprehensively outplayed a dominant world No. 1 who was on a 28-match winning streak.
Wawrinka’s days as a Grand Slam contender are long gone, but he has the chance to grab a few more moments to savor in his farewell season, starting at a venue where he will be received as warmly as if he was French.
Gaël Monfils
It’s been a long time since Gaêl Monfils was doing damage at a Grand Slam, but everyone in Paris is always happy to see him. This year more than most, as the French tennis legend has announced he plans to retire at the end of the year.
Anyone who has watched a tennis highlight online in the past 15 years has probably seen Monfils’ game. He’s the spellbinding magician whose exceptional shotmaking and athleticism continued to thrill crowds and stun opponents deep into his 30s. Though Monfils never reached a Grand Slam final, he is one of the most impactful players of his age group, who reached a career-high No. 6 ranking.
His legacy is defined by his showmanship, his sportsmanship and how inspirational he was to a generation of Black players. His final French Open is sure to be a fun one given that he opens against a fellow crowd-courting Frenchman in Hugo Gaston, and will want to give fans a show one last time.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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