Five Romanian tennis players will play in the first round of the French Open at Roland Garros, in the women’s competition. Romanian fans pin their hopes on Simona Halep, the tournament’s third favorite and a finalist last year at Roland Garros.

Irina Camelia-Begu (No. 30 WTA) also enters the competition as one of the Top 32 seeds, for the first time in her career. Alexandra Dulgheru, Monica Niculescu and Andreea Mitu are Romania’s other three representatives in the main draw at Roland Garros.

Mathematically, Simona Halep has a good chance of making it to the semifinals. She will meet Russian Evgheniya Rodina (no. 91 in the WTA ranking) in the first round.

If she makes it to the third round, she may have to play against French Alize Cornet (No. 29 WTA), who defeated her in the second round of the Madrid Open, earlier this month. There’s also a chance that Halep will play against compatriot Alexandra Dulgheru. The two met in the quarter finals in Rome not two weeks ago. Halep won that match.

In the last 16, Halep could come across Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska (No. 14 WTA) or Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina (No. 19 WTA). Then it’s either Serbia’s Ana Ivanovic (No. 7 WTA) or Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova (No. 9 WTA) in the quarter finals, theoretically.

Should Simona Halep make it this far, then she would look forward to playing against Russia’s Maria Sharapova in the semifinals, in a rematch of the 2014 final which the Romanian lost. Sharapova is in top shape, as she recently won the Internazinali BNL d’Italia in Rome.

Of course, anywhere along the line there could be surprises. Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro, the finalist in Rome, also has a good chance of reaching the semifinals. Navarro’s opponent in the first round is Monica Niculescu.

On the other half of the panel, the favorites to reaching the final are American champion Serena Williams, the world’s best player, Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova (No. 4 WTA), Denmark’s Caroline Wozniaki (No. 5 WTA) and Canada’s Eugenie Buchard (No. 6 WTA).

The tournament’s winner will get EUR 1.8 million while the prizes for the runner-up and the semifinalists are EUR 900,000 and EUR 450,000 respectively.

The winner will also get 2.000 WTA points.

The Grand Slam tournament at Roland Garros starts on Sunday, May 24, and ends on June 7.

editor@romania-insider.com