Two Grand Slam champions, a former World No. 1, and two previous finalists will all need to play their way into the main draw of the the year’s second Grand Slam tournament next month. Former Top 10 players Bianca Andreescu, Sloane Stephens and Karolina Pliskova stand out in a stacked field for the qualifying tournament at Roland Garros, which begins May 18 and was confirmed on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
All three players are bidding for a main-draw return in Paris after missing out on the 2025 tournament due to a combination of injuries. Stephens has the strongest pedigree of the three in Paris, finishing runner-up to Simona Halep in 2018, and reaching two more quarterfinals in 2019 and 2022. Two-time major finalist Pliskova was a semifinalist in 2017 — her only trip to the second week in 13 career main draw efforts in Paris — while 2019 US Open champion Andreescu reached the third round in back-to-back years in 2023-24.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the 34-year-old Pliskova has found a spark on the terre battue at the Mutua Madrid Open this week, where she’s played her way through to the quarterfinals of the WTA 1000 event.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also entered in qualifying are 2021 runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who lost to Barbora Krejcikova in the championship match five years ago; Paula Badosa, a former World No. 2; and two other former semifinalists in Paris, Italy’s Martina Trevisan and Slovenia’s Tamara Zidansek. Five years ago, when the Slovenian reached the final four, she beat Badosa in an epic 7-5, 4-6, 8-6 quarterfinal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stephens and Trevisan are two of seven players using injury-protected rankings to enter qualifying. Among the players to enter on that status are two French favorites, Oceane Dodin, a former World No. 46, and former World No. 10 Kristina Mladenovic, as well as 2021 US Open junior champion Robin Montgomery.<\/p>\n
Zidansek’s compatriot Veronika Erjavec, this week ranked No. 96 in the PIF WTA Rankings, is the highest-ranked player entered in qualifying, followed by Francesca Jones, Badosa, Sinja Kraus and Kaja Juvan.<\/p>\n
Sixteen players will secure berths into the French Open main draw via qualifying, with eight wild cards expected to complete the field of 128 players. Main-draw entry was confirmed two weeks ago, with 100 of the Top 101 players as of the week commencing April 13 entered into the clay-court major.<\/p>\n