The second grand slam of the year is looming into view as the French Open prepares to take centre stage later this month.
Iga Swiatek will arrive as the reigning champion, but as ever it will be a high-quality field at Roland-Garros and it is a tournament that has produced surprise winners in the past.
There will be 32 players seeded for the women's singles draw and this is how that star-studded list is expected to look, albeit with places still to be settled...
MORE: Who has won the most tennis Grand Slams in history?
French Open 2023: Predicted women's singles seeds
| No. seed | Name/country |
| 1 | Iga Swiatek (Poland) |
| 2 | Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus) |
| 3 | Jessica Pegula (USA) |
| 4 | Caroline Garcia (France) |
| 5 | Coco Gauff (USA) |
| 6 | Elena Rybakina (Kazakhstan) |
| 7 | Ons Jabeur (Tunisia) |
| 8 | Maria Sakkari (Greece) |
| 9 | Daria Kasatkina (Russia) |
| 10 | Petra Kvitova (Czech Republic) |
| 11 | Belinda Bencic (Switzerland) |
| 12 | Veronika Kudermetova (Russia) |
| 13 | Barbora Krejcikova (Czech Republic) |
| 14 | Karolina Pliskova (Czech Republic) |
| 15 | Beatriz Haddid Maia (Brazil) |
| 16 | Liudmila Samsonova (Russia) |
| 17 | Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) |
| 18 | Martina Trevisan (Italy) |
| 19 | Magda Linette (Poland) |
| 20 | Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia) |
| 21 | Zheng Qinwen (China) |
| 22 | Ekaterina Alexandrova (Russia) |
| 23 | Madison Keys (USA) |
| 24 | Donna Vekic (Croatia) |
| 25 | Anastasia Potapova (Russia) |
| 26 | Elise Mertens (Belgium) |
| 27 | Irina-Camelia Begu (Romania) |
| 28 | Petra Martic (Croatia) |
| 29 | Zhang Shuai (China) |
| 30 | Bianca Andreescu (Canada) |
| 31 | Bernarda Pera (USA) |
| 32 | Shelby Rogers (USA) |
Who was the last unseeded woman to win the French Open?
Barbora Krejcikova was the last unseeded woman to win the singles at Roland-Garros as recently as 2021, when she defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Krejcikova, of the Czech Republic, was ranked 33rd when she beat 31st seed Pavlyuchenkova 6-1 2-6 6-4 in Paris.
Krejcikova is the third unseeded woman to win the clay-court Grand Slam since 2017, joining Jelena Ostapenko (2017) and Iga Swiatek (2020).
MORE: Predicted men's seedings for French Open 2023
When is the French Open draw 2023?
The 2023 French Open draw will take place at 7 p.m. local time on May 25 at The Orangery in Paris. That's 6 p.m. in the UK, 1 p.m. in USA and 3 a.m. the following day in Australia.
The draw will take place at The Orangery in Paris and is likely to be broadcast live on the tournament YouTube channel.
Why are players seeded in tennis?
The central idea behind having a seeding system is to avoid big-name players meeting in the early rounds. In theory, this saves the blockbuster clashes for later in the tournament.
The top two seeds are placed on opposite sides of the draw and cannot meet until the final.
In grand slams, there are 32 seeded players, with factors such as world ranking and past tournament performance coming into play. However, the French Open sticks more rigidly to world ranking as the basis for the ordering of its seeds.
Some tournaments — notably Wimbledon — use a "surface-based system" to alter seeds depending on the player's history on a particular playing surface.
