French open

No personal experience, but I can give you some advice. Tickets go on sale to the general public Feb. 13. Make sure you go to the official website and get the link to the real ticket seller, rolandgarros.fft-tickets.com. Prices look quite reasonable, but I suspect they sell out quickly once they go on sale. If you google " French Open tickets" you will find a number of agencies selling tickets now at exorbitant prices. Most of these websites are on the list of Black Market sellers whose tickets are listed on the Roland Garros official website as NOT acceptable. Make sure you find and read that warning before proceed ing on this route. They also list authorized agents selling tickets for North America. Have you been to a major tennis tournament before? After paying very high prices to watch games in Ashe stadium at the US Open, my husband said he preferred a grounds pass for the early rounds to sitting in reserved seats in the stadium. They were able to get much closer to some of the big name players and see the games better.

thanks! i have an account set up in both my name and my husbands. it seems you can only each order one time and then only four tickets for show courts throughout the tournament....if you are fortunate enough to get them! i had read abt the evening tickets , but dont quite understand- if i get the day ticket, does it include evening? i will be pretty content with anything. I agree, so much to see on the outside courts. we were lucky enough to attend the olympics at wimbledon and much of the fun was not at center court any other thoughts would be very appreciated! joanne

It was a bit complicated. When we went the day tickets were valid for the day matches which started about 11 a.m. but not for the matches scheduled for the evening - and the evening visitor tickets were valid for the matches scheduled for the evening sessions - stays light until 10:30ish. My husband & daughter needed to enter the special evening visitor ticket gate and then stand in line until day ticket visitors vacated their seats when the day matches had ended, or if they were just tired because they had been there since 10 or 11 a.m., then my hubs & daughter were able to sit in the vacated seats. Since they are big tennis fans, they said the wait in line was worth it to be on centre court & see Djokovic. There are RG staff who manage this whole process. I had to enter a different gate with my open court or grounds pass ticket and was free to go to any of the 16 practice courts or Court 1 (aka the bullring). We found it magical and we will go again someday when our daughter can miss a few days of school.

My French teacher gets tickets every year. You set an alarm and sit at your computer and the minute the ticket sales open up you frantically try to complete a transaction as quickly as possible. Know with as much detail as possible exactly what tickets you are trying to purchase. Then have written down your backups in case those aren't available. I've had the same teacher for 3 years and every year she complains about how hard it is to get good tickets online. If you just want to go to any matches, you'll have better luck.

Dina is exactly right. You should also go onto the site ahead of time to set up your username and password so you're ready to pounce. In Feb 2011 my husband & I stayed up all night trying to buy tickets but the website was so overloaded it continually shut down and everyone in the queue was kicked out had to log in again. Eventually we just purchased open court tickets online the next day - we ended up having a wonderful day at Roland Garros and would buy the open court tickets again in a heartbeat. On our arrival day, a Sat, I also managed to get online exactly at 5 p.m. when Evening Visitor tickets went on sale for the next night (Sun) - the limit was two tickets at a time, I bought two, logged out, immediately logged back in & they were sold out. I bought an open court ticket for myself. When we went the next evening, my husband & 10 year old daughter were lucky enough to able to use their evening visitor tickets to see Djokovic-Gasquet on centre court! I saw Kuznetsova-Hantuchova on Court 1, also a great match. Perhaps you'll be luckier than us on the website, but if not, the open court tix were great. Bonne chance!