Paris, France (SportsNetwork.com) – The draw for the French Open was announced Friday and top seed and defending champion Rafael Nadal appears to have a nice path in search of another title.<\/p>\n
The four-time reigning and eight-time overall Roland Garros titlist will open against oft-injured American journeyman Robby Ginepri and could face David Ferrer in a rematch of last year’s final in this year’s quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Nadal could face third-seeded Stan Wawrinka in the semifinals, which would mark a rematch of this year’s Australian Open final, which was stunningly won by the Swiss slugger.<\/p>\n
The world No. 1 Nadal could encounter second-seeded former world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the final in a couple weeks.<\/p>\n
Wawrinka will open against Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and could face seventh-seeded Wimbledon champion Andy Murray in the quarterfinals. Murray will meet Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev in the first round.<\/p>\n
Ferrer, seeded fifth this year, will open against Dutchman Igor Sijsling and could face rising 11th-seeded Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov in the fourth round.<\/p>\n
The bottom half of the men’s draw features Djokovic and 17-time Grand Slam king Roger Federer.<\/p>\n
Djokovic will open against Portuguese Joao Sousa and could face eighth-seeded Milos Raonic in the quarterfinals or the fourth-seeded Federer or sixth-seeded Tomas Berdych in the semis. Raonic could meet ninth-seeded rising Japanese Kei Nishikori in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
The former French Open champion Federer will take on Slovak Lukas Lacko in his opener and could meet Berdych in the quarters or Djokovic in the semis. Berdych’s stay will start against a qualifier and he could battle 10th-seeded 6-foot-9 American John Isner in the fourth round.<\/p>\n
Nadal and Federer are the only former Roland Garros champions in this year’s field. Federer is also a four-time runner-up to Nadal, while Djokovic gave way to the mighty Spaniard in the 2012 finale in the “City of Light.”<\/p>\n
Djokovic topped his great rival Nadal in the final at last week’s Masters event in Rome.<\/p>\n
The 2014 French Open will get underway Sunday in Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paris, France (SportsNetwork.com) – The draw for the French Open was announced Friday and top seed and defending champion Rafael Nadal appears to have a nice path in search of another title. The four-time reigning and eight-time overall Roland Garros titlist will open against oft-injured American journeyman Robby Ginepri and could face David Ferrer in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}