The 2025 French Open begins May 25 in Paris, and the draws for the men’s and women’s singles are intriguing, while also throwing up some blockbuster first-round matches.
The Athletic’s tennis writers, Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, analyze the match-ups and offer some of their picks for the best matches of the opening days.
What awaits the defending women’s champion in pursuit of history?
Seeing Iga Świątek’s name followed by a No. 5 rather than the customary No. 1 will take some getting used to, but that’s where she is right now after a challenging 12 months since she won her fourth Roland Garros title.
It was also a third French Open in a row, but Świątek has not won a title since and so finds herself with a trickier-than-usual path to the final. Looking ahead, a rematch with last year’s runner-up Jasmine Paolini could await in the quarterfinals, followed by the woman who usurped her as the WTA queen, Aryna Sabalenka, in the last four.
The problem? Doing draw prognostication is often a mug’s game. The bigger problem? Even for a clay-court player as inevitable as Świątek, the path to those matches is laced with danger. She begins against Slovakia’s Rebecca Šramková, who impressed at the Billie Jean King Cup, the international women’s team…
