The Roland Garros French Open Tennis tournament begins on Sunday 26th May 2013 and runs for two weeks.
All eyes are on Spaniard, Rafa Nadal, who has won 7 out of his last 8 appearances.
Novak Djokovic will be looking to claim the only title not yet in his cabinet and to do it he’ll likely have to beat the Majorcan left-hander on his favoured surface.
However, Djokovic’s confidence should be high after he beat Rafa on the clay in April. The pair faced each other in the final of the Monte Carlo Masters, which ended 6-2, 7-6 (1). The last time anyone had beaten Rafa in Monaco was 10 years ago.
Selected Men’s First Round Games
Novak Djokovic V David Goffin
Rafael Nadal V Daniel Brands
Tomas Berdych V Gael Monfils
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga V Aljaz Bedene
Pablo Carreno-Busta V Roger Federer
Reigning champion Maria Sharapova will have her eye on retaining the Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen. She has been seeded number 2 and will face Su-Wei Hsieh of Chinese Taipei in the first round.
The tournament had its record attendance in 2012 with 430,093 spectators passing through the turnstiles in Paris.
In This Story: Gael Monfils
Gaël Sébastien Monfils is a French professional tennis player. He reached a career-high ATP world No. 6 singles ranking on 7 November 2016.
Paris, France‘s capital, is a major European city and a global center for art, fashion, gastronomy and culture. Its 19th-century cityscape is crisscrossed by wide boulevards and the River Seine. Major landmarks include the Eiffel Tower, the 12th-century, Gothic Notre-Dame cathedral and the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées.
Rafael Nadal is a Spanish professional tennis player currently ranked world No. 2 in men’s singles tennis by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP).
Nadal has won 19 Grand Slam singles titles, the second-most in history for a male player, as well as 35 ATP Tour Masters 1000 titles, 21 ATP Tour 500 titles and the 2008 Olympic gold medal in singles and the 2016 Olympic gold medal in doubles. In addition, Nadal has held the world No. 1 ranking for a total of 209 weeks, including being the year-end No. 1 five times.
In majors, Nadal has won a record twelve French Open titles, four US Open titles, two Wimbledon titles and one Australian Open title, and won at least one Grand Slam every year for a record ten consecutive years (2005–2014). Nadal has won 85 career titles overall, including the most outdoor titles in the Open Era (83) and a record 59 titles on clay. With 81 consecutive wins on clay, Nadal holds the record for the longest single-surface win streak in the Open Era.
Nadal has been involved in five Davis Cup titles with Spain, and currently has a 29-win streak and 29–1 record in singles matches at the event. In 2010, at the age of 24, he became the seventh male player and the youngest of five in the Open Era to achieve the singles Career Grand Slam. Nadal is the second male player after Andre Agassi to complete the singles Career Golden Slam, as well as the second male player after Mats Wilander to have won at least two Grand Slams on all three surfaces (grass, hard court and clay).