Forecasting the French: Contenders, Pretenders, Dark Horses (WTA)

While the king of clay has emphatically reaffirmed his dominance over the competition on this surface, the queen of clay hasn’t quite followed suit. As a result, the WTA field at the French Open promises to be vastly more unpredictable and possibly more engaging than its ATP counterpart. We apply the same matrix of contenders, pretenders, and dark horses that we used in the men’s preview: contenders are tournament favorites, pretenders are potential underperformers, and dark horses are potential overachievers although not potential champions. For the women’s draw, however, we don’t focus quite so exclusively on recent results when selecting our contenders. (In other words, we’re not envisaging a Rezai-Martinez Sanchez final two weeks from Saturday, as much as the champion-starved French media would relish such an outcome.)

Click here to continue reading. Hope that you enjoy this preview as well as its ATP counterpart below!