Amanda Anisimova will meet Sarah Rakotomanga in the first round at Roland-Garros 2026 on Monday, a match scheduled for Court Suzanne-Lenglen that pairs a top-10 returnee with one of the WTA Tour’s most rapid risers.
Anisimova injured her wrist at the Miami Open in March and has not been seen on a match court since; she has spent the weeks before Paris upping the intensity of her training and practice as she prepares to return in a Grand Slam where she was a semifinalist in 2019.
The numbers underline the stakes. Anisimova arrives as the world No.6 and as a player who reached the finals at Wimbledon and the US Open last year, but she has no competitive matches on clay this season after the March injury. Rakotomanga, 20 years old and currently ranked No.153, is the contrast: she made her WTA Tour debut last year, won the Sao Paulo title and climbed from No.349 to finish last year at No.123, then carried momentum into this season despite sitting outside the top 100.
Sitting between those lines is Rakotomanga’s voice. On her development she said, "Rafa, I really like his spirit and his attitude on court," and, "That’s something I’ve tried to take from him." She spoke too of influence and aspiration: "And I really like Federer’s game," and, "I wanted my game to be clear and to have the class of Federer and the attitude of Nadal." Asked about the time she believes she needs to complete that growth, she was unhurried: "I have time," she said. "That’s it. I have time to put my game into place."
Context makes this match more than a line on the draw. Roland-Garros will test Anisimova’s readiness under clay-court lights where she once reached the last four; it will also test whether Rakotomanga’s breakout run from last year — a WTA debut, a title in Sao Paulo and a jump from No.349 to No.123 by year-end — translates into consistent success against top-ranked opposition on Parisian clay.
The tension is obvious and narrow: Anisimova’s absence from competitive play since the March wrist injury versus her reported ramp-up in practice and training. The calendar gives no intermediate tune-up matches on record for her; Rakotomanga arrives battle-hardened by last year’s rise but sitting at No.153 now, a ranking that frames her as an underdog on paper even as her results argue otherwise.
How this first-round pairing resolves will matter immediately. If Anisimova moves through a tested opponent without signs of rust she reasserts herself among the favorites; if Rakotomanga upsets the world No.6 on Court Suzanne-Lenglen, it will fast-forward the narrative of a young player who already reshaped her ranking and whose clay-game ambitions were built in Toulouse after leaving Madagascar. Monday’s match is not a warm-up: it is the first clear answer to whether Anisimova’s intensified preparation has closed the gap left by a March injury, and whether Rakotomanga’s breakout year was the start of a new normal.
