27 May 2013 | Tennis Queensland

Roland Garros 2013 kicked off on Sunday with seven Aussies in the running for the title of Grand Slam champion in this year’s French Open.

Queenslanders Bernard Tomic, Samantha Stosur and Ashleigh Barty will represent Australia when they play their opening round matches on Tuesday. Stosur enters the tournament seeded 9th and will play Japan’s Kimiko Date-Krumm tomorrow. Barty, who was awarded Tennis Australia’s reciprocal wildcard position will take on Lucie Hradecka (CZE) in the hope to improve on a first round straight-sets loss in 2012.

Fellow Queenslander and wildcard recipient John Millman has since had to pull out of the tournament due to injury, with Nick Kyrgios set to take his place and compete against Radek Stepanek (CZE) at 11am local time.

Tomic has been drawn to play unseeded Victor Hanescu (ROU).

Overnight, both Lleyton Hewitt and Marinko Matosevic fought it out against seeded international players. Both matches had promising starts for Australia, however Hewitt was defeated in a 5 set marathon against Gilles Simon 3-6 1-6 6-4 6-1 7-5 and Matosevic went down 4-6 3-6 4-6 to 4th seed David Ferrer (ESP). James Duckworth of NSW also lost his first round match against unseeded Blaz Kavcic (SLO) 6-2 6-2 6-2.

For full tournament details visit the Tennis Australia website.