The French Open will have a new television partner beginning in 2025.
The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported Friday that Warner Bros. Discovery—the home of TNT Sports— have agreed to a 10-year deal worth $650 million to televise the French Open in the United States. The deal starts in 2025 and runs through ’34.
NBC has broadcast the French Open in the United States every year since 1975, aside from 1980 to ’82 when CBS aired the event.
TNT Sports is best known for its NBA coverage, although the future of that partnership is in jeopardy as the league searches for a new television rights contract after the 2024-25 season. Multiple reports in recent months indicate the NBA is preparing to leave TNT behind as ESPN, NBC and Amazon will become its new broadcast partners.
Tennis isn’t the only sport Warner Bros. Discovery has splurged on outside of basketball in recent weeks. Last month, ESPN agreed to sublicense coverage of select College Football Playoff games to TNT for the next five years.
While the future of TNT’s beloved Inside the NBA show featuring Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal hangs in the balance, the network is set to head to the clay courts next spring.
If indeed this 2024 vintage of the French Open marked the last time that 14-time champ Rafael Nadal played this event, be assured there is an heir apparent. An heiress apparent, anyway. Saturday on Court Philippe Chatrier, Iga Swiatek, 23, won the French Open women’s singles title for the third straight time and fourth time in the last five years. In this afternoon’s final, in what was less a tennis match than a tennis demonstration, she swept aside Italy’s Jasmine Paolini 6–2, 6–1 in 68 minutes.
Recalling Nadal, Swiatek sometimes appeared to play tennis. Other times she was playing an elevated, clay-specific version of the sport. She guided her heavy, spin-drizzled whipping groundstrokes with power and precision. She served capably. She transitioned from impenetrable defense to potent offense. She hugged the baseline between unbeatable and unplayable.
Many of Swiatek’s talents and skills are obvious to the naked eye. Others, less so. In the second round, she was a point from losing to Naomi Osaka, who entered the tournament tied with Swiatek with four majors. Swiatek took a risk on a return. She won the point. And the game. And soon thereafter the match.
Her campaign salvaged, she was never threatened again, dropping just 17 games in her next five matches, adding to her tally of 21 straight wins at Roland Garros. Confidence begetting confidence, on the rare occasion she is made to fight, Swiatek does so.
The comparisons to Nadal—who won only 64% of his majors here, as opposed to Swiatek’s current ratio of 80—are apt. So, too are the comparisons to Steffi Graf, who married skill and athleticism with unflappability. One stat that tells a rich story: this was Swiatek’s 22nd overall pro title. She has played in 26 finals.
Do spare a thought for Paolini, the delightful and winsome 28-year-old, who has emerged as both a lead figure of the Italian tennis invasion and a new star on the WTA Tour. Mid-career, her gifts are finally coalescing. If she is modest in stature, she is overflowing with energy and confidence. She leaves this event embedded in the top 10 and is still alive to play the women's doubles final tomorrow with partner Sara Errani.
But today she had few answers for Swiatek and her battery of skills, which gives her something in common with 126 other players in the draw. This was Swiatek’s day. At her event. During her era.
For two decades, the Big Three was a sort of rhythm section to men’s tennis. Women’s tennis now has a-the-big one.
He is a man who needs no introduction. Especially here, where his statue adorns the grounds. But when Rafael Nadal came out Monday for his first match of the 2024 French Open, the courtside announcer did his thing. Taking a breath, he summoned Nadal by name and then ticked off the years he had won the title.
Fourteen in all. It’s a joke of a tally. The recitation of which enabled a somber occasion to start with some levity.
Presumptively, this was to be Nadal’s last French Open, his final raging against the dying of the light. He turns 38 next week. His current ranking slums outside the top 250, the kind of grim math that comes when your body doesn’t let you play—much less win—many matches.
He entered the tournament unseeded, jarring in itself. And, the tennis fates did their thing, yielding a first-round opponent of … Alexander Zverev, the fourth seed, the player who won last week’s big preview event in Rome, one of the top contenders, the last player at Roland Garros to push Nadal.
So it was these last dance vibes that came edged with a wince. The Rolling Stones or Elton John can announce a final tour. They may not hit every note. But they also don’t lose in straight sets to, say, Mumford & Sons.
Tickets to the most anticipated first-round match in the history of tennis—it's not hyperbole: try and name another—fetched $5,000 on the secondary markets and brought out both royalty and tennis nobility. Though he plays Tuesday, Novak Djokovic was in the stands. As was Carlos Alcaraz, the betting favorite to win this event. Iga Świątek, the defending women’s champion, finished her first-round rout, showered and took a seat.
As for the match itself … it played out as expected. Nostalgia and hope are powerful intoxicants. But eventually, they regress to the mean, and talent and time win out.
There were moments when Nadal did a convincing Nadal impersonation, striking the ball ferociously, picking off volleys, looking like the clay court impresario whose career record at this venue, going into Monday, was 112–3. There were times when he looked like a man in his late 30s—playing a fine opponent, more than a decade younger. There were times when he looked fresh, and there were times he looked physically spent, as one would expect from any player who had gone more than 450 days without playing a best-of-five match.
Nadal was, inauspiciously, broken to start the match, and Zverev took the first set 6–3. Nadal broke Zverev and served for the second, electrifying the crowd. When he failed to close, the deflation was palpable. When he lost the second set in a tiebreaker, this went from an exercise in potentially witnessing history to an exercise in potentially witnessing Nadal’s final match, at least at the French Open.
Nadal addressed the Roland Garros crowd following the match, saying he wasn't sure if this was his last French Open. / Clive Mason/Getty Images
The third set was Nadal's insistence on not going quietly. He got up an early break but then gave it up and fell 6–3, 7–6, 6–3. Respectable? Absolutely. But not the result befitting a 14-time champ.
You cite the comical, flattering stats, you also have to cite the downers. For the first time in nearly 20 years, Nadal lost in the first round of a clay event. For the first time here, he lost in the first round. For the first time ever, he has now lost back-to-back matches on clay.
Credit Zverev for compartmentalizing, ignoring the occasion, locking in mentally, and simply bringing his flagrant talent—especially on his backhand—to bear. He can now pivot from this momentous match to trying to win his first major, a distinct possibility. (Zverev's appeal of a penalty order issued by a German court stemming from domestic abuse allegations made by his ex-girlfriend goes to trial during the tournament.)
As for Nadal … who knows? He called off a retirement ceremony the tournament had planned. It’s not that he’s being coy about the endpoint of his unrivaled career. It’s that, by all accounts, he genuinely doesn’t know when the ride will end. Ironically his last match might be in Paris in two months, assuming he fulfills his vow to play in the 2024 Olympics.
He left the court wearing a look of resignation. One that suggested he has played the French Open for the last time. But also—a champion to the end—that he genuinely thought he could take this match.
On Monday, Zverev won. So, alas, and as ever, did time.
The world No. 1 player Iga Świątek has normalized after a close call in the second round, is now on pace to make it three French Open titles in four years.
In Świątek's way is No. 6 Marketa Vondroušová, who isn't known for her clay court talent, but has taken advantage of an easy draw to make it into the quarterfinals at Roland-Garros. However, oddsmakers aren't giving her much of a chance against the No. 1 player in the world.
Vondroušová has enjoyed an easy path to the quarterfinal after a poor clay swing.
The world No. 6 player isn’t known for her clay court prowess and only won six of 10 matches in the run-up to the French Open. However, she hasn’t had to face a top 90 player thus far and is into the quarters, but she faces the toughest possible test in the No. 1 player in the world in Świątek.
Świątek has enjoyed plenty of success against Vondroušová, 3-0 all-time in official matches, including a 6-1, 6-2 win in the first round of the 2020 French Open.
After facing a match point in the second round against Naomi Osaka, Świątek has dropped six games across the last two matches and is back to her dominant form.
In this clay swing, Świątek is a blistering 18-1, and has dropped only three sets in those 18 wins.
When she wins, it’s typically in blowout fashion, so I’m counting on the odds on favorite to win with ease again.
PICK: UNDER 18.5 Games (-128)
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