Roland Garros 2025 Preview

After qualifiers and lucky losers were placed into the Roland Garros draws, we simulated the tournament to predict how it might go. The top of the women's draw is the closest I have ever seen, with the top 3 all within 2% of each other!

Tales of Two Halves - in Both Draws

In our simulations, neither top seed is the top choice to win the Roland Garros title. Why not? Plenty of blame can be laid at the feet of Paris Saint-Germain's Ousmane Dembele, who did the draw on May 23.

On the women's side, Aryna Sabalenka is in the same quarter as Qinwen Zheng, who won the Olympic gold medal on these courts last year. That is the first quarter of the top half. The second quarter, which would produce the other semifinalist in that half, contains Iga Swiatek, the Olympic bronze medalist, who has only lost 2 matches in her 6 Roland Garros appearances, and Jasmine Paolini, who made the final in Paris last year and beat Qinwen in the final last week in Rome, the tournament that most closely mirrors the conditions of Roland Garros. Olympic silver medalist Donna Vekic is there, too, as are the always-dangerous Jelena Ostapenko and Elena Rybakina. The WTA's top 10 includes two players who might be considered specialists on the faster hard and grass courts, Madison Keys and Jessica Pegula. They are both in the bottom half with Coco Gauff.

On the men's side, Jannik Sinner is also not our most likely champion. That honor goes to the man who beat him in the final in Rome, Carlos Alcaraz. After Alcaraz, the next four are Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zverev, Jack Draper, and Novak Djokovic. All four of them are in the same half of the draw. The way it works out, that half's quarterfinals could be Sinner vs Draper and Zverev vs Djokovic. For comparison, if seeding holds, Alcaraz's half would feature Alcaraz vs Casper Ruud and Taylor Fritz vs Lorenzo Musetti. They are all legitimate threats, but nowhere near the challenge of the top half.

Top 5 in men's championship probability - Alcaraz is the favorite, with Sinner next, followed by 3 heavy hitters from Sinner's half of the draw

Top 3 in women's championship probability - Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka, and Iga Swiatek are incredibly close together

Can Joao Fonseca do it Again?

Joao Fonseca exploded onto the scene in the Australian Open, beating Andrey Rublev in the first round. He followed that up with his first ATP Tour title in Buenos Aires, and then he hit a little bit of a rough patch. Despite the poor recent form, the Roland Garros draw opens up an opportunity for the Brazilian. In the first round, he faced off against #30 seed Hubert Hurkacz. Getting through that matchup will be far from an easy task, with Hurkacz pushing Novak Djokovic to a final set tiebreaker in a warmup event in Geneva, but Hurkacz's game is not designed to win often on clay and Fonseca has had an opportunity to spend some time on the Roland Garros courts while Hurkacz has been in Switzerland. Our model gives Fonseca a 46% chance to get to the 2nd round, where he would face a Frenchman in front of what would likely be a very rowdy stadium crowd. Fonseca would, however, be favored over either Pierre-Hugues Herbert or Benjamin Bonzi. Can Joao Fonseca string a couple wins together and step back into the spotlight? Our model gives it a 35% chance.

A Potential Star Turn for Francisco Cerundolo

When it comes to x-factors in this year's Roland Garros men's draw, there is a name you should know: Francisco Cerundolo. His draw is very difficult - if he makes the third round (he has a 49% chance), he would likely hit a run of three big names in a row: Grigor Dimitrov, Alexander Zverev, and Novak Djokovic. While the probability of him making even the Round of 16 is low, it sets up for the Argentine, who has been in 7 quarterfinals in the last 4 months, to be a very interesting dark horse. Clay is not Dimitrov's preferred surface, Zverev has a long history of choking, and Djokovic has been largely ice cold since Australia. If things shake out, Francisco Cerundolo could be someone we talk about after the tournament as a player who made a run that no one saw coming... but maybe we should have.

Princess Diana's Coronation

Qinwen Zheng beat Aryna Sabalenka and made the final in Rome. She is the Olympic gold medalist from an event that was played at Roland Garros. So why is she not one of our biggest threats to win the title? An easy place to look would be the potential quarterfinal matchup with Aryna Sabalenka, but the major stumbling blocks start in the Round of 16 with #11 seed Diana Shnaider (there is also an argument to be made for a potential 3rd-round encounter with Peyton Stearns). Our model gives Shnaider a 57% chance of making the Round of 16 and 61% for Qinwen. That gives us a 35% chance of a Qinwen-Shnaider matchup, where Shnaider would have a 40% win probability. There is a 3rd big threat in the Sabalenka/Qinwen quarter, and Diana Shnaider is ready to make some noise.

Most Vulnerable Seeds

#13 Ben Shelton - plays Lorenzo Sonego in Round 1 (Win Probability: 59%)

#23 Beatriz Haddad Maia - plays Hailey Baptiste in Round 1 (Win Probability: 35%)

#25 Magdalena Frech - plays Ons Jabeur in Round 1 (Win Probability: 20%)

#30 Anna Kalinskaya - plays Marie Bouzkova in Round 1 (Win Probability: 35%)

#30 Hubert Hurkacz - plays Joao Fonseca in Round 1 (Win Probability: 54%)

#32 Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard - plays Zizou Bergs in Round 1 (Win Probability: 23%)

Follow along with us and enjoy the tennis!