PARIS: Rafael Nadal will face world number four Alexander Zverev in a blockbuster first round match at his farewell French Open while women´s champion Iga Swiatek and fellow four-time major winner Naomi Osaka are on a second round collision course.
Defending men´s champion and 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic will face French veteran Pierre Hugues-Herbert in his opener. Nadal, who has won Roland Garros on 14 occasions, is unseeded after injury saw his ranking plummet to 276.
He and Zverev met in the semi-finals in 2022 when the German was forced to retire after suffering a serious ankle injury. Nadal, the winner of 22 Grand Slam titles, will turn 38 next week and this season will be his last on tour.
He holds a 7-3 winning head-to-head record against Germany´s Zverev with five of those victories coming on clay. Zverev, 27, arrives in Paris on the back of lifting the Rome Open title last weekend. “I´m going to play the French Open thinking that I can give my all, 100 per cent,” said Nadal after a second round exit in Rome last week.
As well as 14 titles in Paris, Nadal can boast a record of 112 wins and just three losses, two of which came against Djokovic who will be chasing a fourth French Open title. Djokovic turned 37 on Wednesday and marked the occasion by winning the 1,100th match of his career in Geneva.
The Serb has yet to win a title in 2024 with runs to the semi-finals at the Australian Open and Monte Carlo Masters his best performances. Following Thursday´s draw, Djokovic is seeded to face Zverev in the semi-finals.
World number two Jannik Sinner, who took Djokovic´s Australian Open title in January, faces Christopher Eubanks of the United States. Third-seeded Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, a semi-finalist in Paris in 2023, plays a qualifier.
Sinner and Alcaraz are seeded to meet in the semi-finals but both men have been suffering from injuries which forced them to skip the Rome event. Andy Murray, the 2016 runner-up, is also competing at the tournament for the final time.
The 37-year-old tackles 2015 champion Stan Wawrinka, 39, in a battle of grizzled Grand Slam veterans. The pair have met 22 times in a two-decade rivalry with Murray boasting a 13-9 edge. Three of those clashes have come at Roland Garros with Murray winning in the semi-finals in 2016 while the Swiss came out on top in the last-four in 2017 and first round in 2020.