Bonjour! Welcome to your preview of the 2025 French Open.
Despite being Easter, we have strong fields in both the men’s and women’s draws, including a stack of French players supporting their home tournament.
The big news is that Myriam Enmer, 2022 World Champion, is making her first international appearance since 2023.
Since her last tournament, Myriam has been running marathons and volunteering at Roland Garros for the Olympics!
“I’m really looking forward to playing in competition and see all the racketlon community,” she said.
Don’t be deceived by the World Champion’s slide down the international rankings, Enmer returned to training last September. She made her domestic comeback in October, winning the French Championships, defeating World Number 3, Pauline Cavé in the final.
Since her defeat to Myriam in October, Pauline defeated 2 x World Champion, Stine Jacobsen, to win the Indian Open. Could she defeat another World Champion this weekend?
Pauline and Myriam are due to play against each other on Sunday afternoon, the last match scheduled in the Women’s Singles draw. It’s likely that this match will effectively be the Women’s final.
However, there are three other women trying to stop that possibility from eventuating. Aurélie Haurant, Anaïs Ben Mansour and Marie Jaussein are all from France.
Perhaps the most likely to upset either Pauline or Myriam would be Marie Jaussein, who has a knack of knocking out seeds. Marie did this twice in 2023, to make the elite singles final in both the French Open and the Lausanne Open.
We spoke to Myriam Enmer about her opponents this weekend:
“Honestly I think they have different profiles but there is not one easy match. I need to take all matches seriously.
“And if it’s a round robin we have 4 matches so physically it will be challenging”
Men’s Singles
World Number 2, Sylvain Ternon, is playing badminton this weekend, so unfortunately he will not feature in this year’s French Open.
The top seed will be World Number 5, Kresten Hougaard. The Dane is in the same half as his doubles partner, Bastian Böhm from Germany. They are joined by 6 French players, including recent Hong Kong Open finalist, Stephane Quiquempois.
In the third quarter, we have an all Swiss battle in round 1, between World Number 7 Nicolas Lenggenhager and World +40 Champion Christian Schaefer.
In the final quarter, World Number 14, Matěj Volf from Czechia, narrowly missed out on being seeded and has a tough draw. He plays defending champion, Koen Hageraats, in the first round. However, it’s Koen’s first tournament of 2025 – let’s see how it goes!
Also in the last quarter is recent Finnish Open finalist, Andreas Kotala from Switzerland.
Mixed Doubles
Myriam Enmer & Koen Hageraats won the Mixed Doubles at the 2022 London Open. They’ll be teaming up again this weekend.
“I really enjoy playing with him”, Myriam said. “We compensate each other[‘s] weaknesses and strengths in table tennis and badminton – and we get along well. That’s a good combination.”
The French/Dutch combination will face top seeds Pauline Cavé & Kresten Hougaard in the first round. Pauline is defending champion in the mixed, winning with Brit Matthew Davidson last year.
The winner of this match will likely face second seeds Marie Jaussein & Nicolas Lenggenhager in the final. Unless French pair Anaïs Ben Mansour & Jean-François Aubert can pull off a monumental upset on their international racketlon debut.
Men’s Doubles
Top seeds Bastian Böhm & Kresten Hougaard receive a bye through to the semi finals, whilst the other six pairs have to play one additional match.
The second seeds from Austria, Stefan Urban & Matthias Windbacher will be given a tough workout from the start, as they take on French pair Anthony Duthuillé & Stephane Quiquempois.
Keep an eye out for youngsters, Andreas Kotala & Matěj Volf, tipped to cause some headaches for their opposition.
