A roof built for champions

By Emma Peterson. 

From the French Open to the Olympics and Paralympics, learn about the roofs above the heads of the world’s best tennis players!  

The 2024 Summer Olympics has come and gone, with incredible feats of strength, agility and skill from the athletes that competed there. You might have heard about the environmentally-friendly beds of the Olympic village or that the triathletes dove into the River Seine, but did you notice the roofs above the tennis matches? If you didn’t, it might be because they were there one moment and gone the next!  

Prior to the French Open (which began in May this year), the French tennis facility Roland Garros unveiled a new, retractable roof for the Court Philippe-Chatrier. This incredible structure weight 3,500 tons and covers 10,000 square meters. This design is comprised of 11 panels on 11 trusses, which stretches 344 feet with canvas covering the entire thing. The best part? It can be closed in only 15 minutes! The purpose of this addition is to keep the tournaments on track, no matter what the weather conditions are, specifically aiming to avoid rain interruptions. As for how this might affect the players’ experience, Roland-Garros top seed Novak Djokovic explained that it would be heavier inside with the roof closed, more like a clay court. He elaborated, "The conditions that they played on, heavy clay, not much bounce, humid, night session, we are going to have that as well in Paris.” The referee of the tournament gets to choose whether the roof is closed or not, similar to how they get to choose whether floodlights (which operate separately from the roof) are turned on for increased visibility. 

Then, in June prior to the Olympics, Roland-Garros announced the addition of another retractable roof over Court Suzanne-Lenglen. The project was guided by architect and urbanist Dominique Perrault and features a canvas roof with wings that are 328 feet long and 65 feet wide. When asked about the design of the roof, which is based on lightness and should appear to almost levitate above the court and stands, Dominique explained, “We want to pay tribute to tennis, of course, but also to the Suzanne Lenglen era, the 1930s and the fashion of that time.” The stadium it will “float” over contains 10,000 seats, making it the second biggest at Roland-Garros (beaten out for first by Court Philippe-Chatrier with 15,000 seats). With the addition of this roof, two out of the three show courts at Roland-Garros now feature these impressive retractable roofs, making matches possible even when the weather isn’t cooperating.  

Photo sources in order of appearance: Forbes, Roland-Garros and AP News