The Roland Garros tournament is considered one of the major tennis tournaments of the season and one of the most prestigious. It concludes the clay court season before the start of the grass court season and annually crowns the best players in the world on this surface. We invite you to test your knowledge about this tennis tournament with 7 questions.
The Roland Garros tournament is part of the 4 Grand Slam tournaments along with Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open.
It is also referred to as the Internationaux de France or "French Open" in English.
This Tennis championship is held annually in Paris at the end of spring.
The first edition of the "French International Tennis Championship" was organized in Paris in 1891. The players in contention were all men because this tournament remained exclusively male until 1897.
Moreover, until 1925, this championship was reserved for French players and foreign players licensed in French clubs.
In its early days, the Roland Garros tournament alternated between the facilities of the Racing Club de France and the Stade Français until 1927. The Roland Garros Stadium was inaugurated in 1928 to host the Davis Cup final.
It is the stadium that gave its name to the French Open at Roland Garros. Initially, it consisted of only the central court (currently with a capacity of 15,000 seats).
This tennis stadium, located on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, has gradually expanded to cover an area of 12 hectares. Enlarged and modernized several times, it now has 18 clay courts.
This venue also houses iconic places such as the Place des Mousquetaires, established in 1989, with bronze statues of René Lacoste, Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet, and Jacques Brugnon, nicknamed "the four musketeers" of French Tennis. A tennis museum was also built under court number 1 in 2003.
Since 2006, the Roland Garros tournament has had the particularity of starting on a Sunday.
This competition was also the first of the four Grand Slam tournaments to become "open," meaning it has been open to professional players as well as amateur players since 1968. Before this date, the tournaments were strictly reserved for amateur players.
This tournament is played on clay courts, with best-of-five sets for men and best-of-three sets for women. The absence of a tiebreak in the final set sometimes leads to matches lasting several hours, ending with very high scores.
Yannick Noah is the last French player to have won the men's singles at the Roland Garros tournament in 1983.
Henri Leconte was a finalist in the men's singles in 1988 and both players won the men's doubles in 1984.
Additionally, Guy Forget was a two-time finalist in this event, in 1987 with Yannick Noah, and in 1996 with Jakob Hlasek.
The Frenchwoman Mary Pierce was a finalist in the women's singles in 1994, won the tournament in 2000, and was a finalist again in 2005.
Former world number one, Amélie Mauresmo has been the director of the Roland Garros tournament since 2022. The French player never won this competition, but she was revealed there in 1999.
After leaving the clay courts in 2009, she returned to the Roland Garros stadium as a consultant for France Télévisions, and then as director, succeeding Guy Forget.
With 14 titles at Roland Garros, Rafael Nadal has entered the legend and holds a record that will be very difficult to match...
Even though the Spanish player was eliminated early by Alexander Zverev in 2024, he remains the undisputed king of the Parisian clay.
He has never lost a final there and won the competition in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022. Out of 116 matches played at Roland Garros, Nadal has won 112!
The longest match ever played by the Spaniard in this tournament lasted 4h53, against the Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu, who eventually succumbed after an epic duel (5-7, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4).
Author Audrey on 27 August 2024
Sports and Leisure : Leisure
Author Audrey on 25 November 2021
Sports and Leisure : Individual sports