During the French Open tennis tournament, hotel vacancies are rare. We recommend booking your room as early as possible on the Hotels Maurice Hurand website. You will find all of our establishments in Saint Germain des Prés, Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower – Les Invalides neighbourhood.

 

Roland Garros Stadium is a clay court tennis stadium located on the west side of Paris, on the edge of Bois de Boulogne Park. The stadium was named in honour of the aviation pioneer, Roland Garros, who died in air combat in 1918, during World War I. Roland Garros Stadium has a total of 24 courts. The three largest are the Central Court (or Philippe Chatrier Court), Suzanne Lenglen Court and Court No. 1.

Les Internationaux de France or Tournoi de Roland Garros, or simply Roland Garros, is a clay-court tennis championship held in Paris every year since 1928 at Roland Garros Stadium and organised by the FFT (Fédération Française de Tennis – French Tennis Federation). It takes place during the last week of May and the first week of June. It is currently one of the four Grand Slam tournaments, the second on the calendar after the Australian Open in January. Wimbledon follows in June and the US Open in August. In the tennis world, which is mainly English speaking, the tournament is known as the French Open (since 1968, the first year of the Open era). The 2009 titles were held by the Swiss Roger Federer and the Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova.

It is the largest clay court tournament and the only Grand Slam tournament still played on clay since the US Open abandoned it in 1978. It is generally considered as the second most prestigious tennis tournament in the world after Wimbledon, although it is the tennis event with the largest audience and media coverage worldwide. Furthermore, many players from areas around the world where tennis is mainly played on clay, such as Latin America or Southern Europe, consider Roland Garros to be the most important tournament of the year.

The clay surface that the tournament is played on slows the ball down and gives it a very high bounce, which entails a very different style of playing than on fast surfaces (Grass, DecoTurf and Rebound Ace) used at the other three Grand Slam tournaments. This explains why some of the greatest players in history, such as Jimmy Connors, Pete Sampras or the current No. 1 player in the world, Roger Federer, who have won each of the other three tournaments several times, have always failed to win Roland Garros, never managing to pull off the Grand Slam. On the other hand, eight of the last ten winners on the Parisian clay courts have never managed to win any of the other three Grand Slam tournaments. Moreover, given its slow surface and five-set matches without a tiebreak in the last set, Roland Garros is considered to be the most difficult and physically demanding of all tennis tournament.

Roland Garros is one of the major tournaments of the season, as it is the second of the Grand Slam tournaments, which are the most prestigious. It closes the clay court season (slow surfaces) for the world’s best players, before the start of the grass court season. Considered to be the most demanding tournament, notably physically, each season Roland Garros marks the arrival of one of the kings of the surface... He is almost never an attacker who is a service-volley player: John McEnroe never managed to win here, for example. The last French attacker to win was Yannick Noah in 1983, who won 3 sets to 0.

On the eve of the tournament's opening, the traditional Benny Berthet exhibition day takes place, with profits going to different charity associations.