beatriz haddad maia opens the 2026 French Open against Francesca Jones on Sunday, landing in one of the first-round matches on a day when nearly one-third of the women’s slate is scheduled for Paris. The former world No. 10 enters a draw that also features Belinda Bencic’s return after three years away, but Haddad Maia’s immediate task is Jones.
Jones And Haddad Maia
Jones gets the sort of opening-round assignment that can reshape a fortnight fast. Haddad Maia is listed as a former world No. 10, which gives the match a higher profile than a standard first-day pairing and puts immediate pressure on both players to start cleanly on clay.
The French Open begins Sunday, so the match arrives with the full women’s draw fresh and crowded. That timing matters because the opening round is where seed lines, rankings history, and current form collide before the tournament settles into its deeper sections.
Bencic Returns To Paris
Belinda Bencic enters as the 11th seed and returns to the French Open for the first time in three years after her maternity comeback. Her path has been steep: she began the 2025 season ranked 489th and still worked her way to a Grand Slam semifinal at Wimbledon after rebuilding her ranking.
That kind of climb gives the top half of the draw extra weight, because a player who was outside the spotlight early last year is now seeded and expected to survive the opening week. In a first round packed with familiar names, Bencic’s return sits alongside Haddad Maia’s matchup as one of the early markers of where the women’s event may tilt.
Krejcikova And Baptiste
Barbora Krejčíková also arrives with a sharper edge to her opener. The former Roland-Garros champion is 3-0 lifetime against Hailey Baptiste, yet Baptiste beat Aryna Sabalenka this swing and reached the Madrid semifinal with wins over Jasmine Paolini, Belinda Bencic, and Sabalenka.
She has already beaten Krejčíková once, in Wuhan, which gives that first-round meeting a harder read than a seed-versus-upstart label would suggest. Sorana Cirstea rounds out the group of notable first-round names, and her farewell year on tour adds another layer to a Paris opening day already loaded with players carrying recent results and long-form context into the same bracket.
For readers following the women’s draw, the immediate path is simple: Jones and Haddad Maia are one of Sunday’s first checks on how the bracket is settling, and the result will tell more about the draw than any preview can.
