Such is the nomadic life of the touring pro, one might say. Yet at a time of strict quarantine rules, sudden lockdowns and the kind of unpredictable travelling conditions Barty encountered en route from Brisbane to Miami, a journey that took two full days, the Australian contingent has it especially tough. When you hail from Brisbane, where international arrivals are capped at 1,300 a week and required to self-isolate for a fortnight, popping back home to see the family for a few days is not an option.

The fuss-free Barty has put a brave face on it all, rightly stressing that the tennis fraternity is lucky to be able to travel and compete at all in the midst of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, a repeat of her 2019 title triumph at Roland Garros, where she is the top seed and faces Bernarda Pera in round one, would go a long way to making up for any homesickness. 

It is illuminating to consider a remark Barty made about the globe-trotting nature of the tour before the word “coronavirus” became embedded in the global lexicon. “I remember telling Mum that I hated it [the travelling],” she told the WTA’s My Story series. “And a part of me now still does.”

It doesn’t show; at least, not in a negative way. Since leaving Brisbane after her disappointing quarter-final exit to the wily Czech Karolina Muchova at the Australian Open the previous month, Barty has been on a tear. She has a tour-leading three titles to her name, an advantage of more than 2,000 points over second-placed Naomi Osaka in the world standings, and the business-like air of a woman determined to reap maximum benefit from her prolonged absence from home.

A hint of that inner steel has been discernible in the amiable Aussie’s robust response to questions about the legitimacy of her No 1 status. Her decision to skip both the US Open and Roland Garros last year led to suggestions that Osaka – who won in New York and Melbourne – was No 1 in all but name. When the subject was raised following her Miami Open win, Barty was having none of it.

“I never feel like I have to prove anything to anyone,” said the Australian, who retained pole position by virtue of a modified ranking system designed to protect players reluctant to travel during Covid. “I think everyone needs to understand that it’s a pandemic.”

The subsequent transition to European clay has shifted the terms of the debate. Osaka, for whom clay court tennis remains something of an unsolved mystery, has never been beyond the third round at Roland Garros, and early defeats in Madrid and Rome inspire little confidence of a title challenge this year. Time will tell what effect the controversy surrounding her media boycott has. Conversely, Barty’s recovery from match point down against Slovakian qualifier Kristina Kucova in Miami seemed to light a fire in the Australian, creating a momentum going into the clay-court season that brought victory in Stuttgart and a final appearance at the Caja Mágica. 

Barty, who hit with Osaka on Court Philippe Chatrier this week, has also made some notable additions to her competitive arsenal. Her off-court training regime with strength and conditioning coach Mark Taylor has added fresh sharpness to her movement, while a switch to gut strings has given her extra speed on the first serve, more spin on the second and greater penetration with her two-fisted backhand. 

She will need all those traits and more, however, if she is to prise the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen from the grasp of the defending champion Iga Swiatek, who she is scheduled to meet in the semi-finals. 

Fresh from a 6-0, 6-0 demolition of Karolina Pliskova in the Italian Open final that earned her a maiden WTA 1000 title and propelled her into the world’s top 10 for the first time, Swiatek starts the tournament narrowly ahead of Barty as the title favourite. That status brings its own pressures, although the maturity with which Swiatek has handled her career since last year, when her breakthrough win in Paris brought overnight stardom and triggered a blizzard of media and sponsorship commitments, suggests she is admirably equipped to cope. 

Credit for that must go partly to Daria Abramowicz, the sports psychologist who has been at Swiatek’s side throughout her meteoric rise, and has advised her charge to adopt a low-key approach to her title defence. “We are just focusing on treating this tournament the same as any other, because that’s the most important thing,” said Swiatek. “The season is long, and I have played many tournaments until that stage, and I’m going to have many more chances after. So I’m just trying to lower my expectations and remember that, from the experience of other players, it’s not easy to be a defending champion, so I’m giving myself time.”

Swiatek is unlikely to need too long. Her flawless performance against Pliskova in Rome offered a timely reminder of the composure and self-belief that carried the teenager to success on the Parisian clay seven months ago. A model of focus and consistency, Swiatek limited the hapless Pliskova to just 13 points, playing each rally with such ferocious commitment that she remained oblivious to the scale of her victory until afterwards, when she had to check the final score with her coach Piotr Sierzputowski.  

It was precisely the kind of ruthless, relentless tennis that Swiatek has been targeting since winning in Paris last year. Like a heavyweight boxer out to clean up the division, the Pole is on a self-confessed mission to bring stability to the women’s game, to break the capricious cycle that has yielded a dozen different grand slam champions since 2017. “What women’s tennis is struggling with [is that] we are not as consistent as Rafa, Roger and Novak,” she said after clinching her Roland Garros title. “My goal is to do that.” 

To make good on her ambition, Swiatek will need to improve a second serve that proved her undoing when she played Barty in Madrid. Having blitzed the Australian in the opening three games, when Barty was visibly taken aback by the violent ferocity of her topspin forehand, Swiatek contrived to produce three double faults at 5-5 in the first set and went on to lose in straight sets. Should Barty and Swiatek make it through, their semi-final showdown would be one of the most eagerly anticipated matches of the year.

Last year’s finalist Sofia Kenin, the fourth seed, will be keen to ensure that clash does not happen. Before the former Australian Open champion can think about a potential quarter-final against Swiatek, however, she must first overcome a tough opener against Jelena Ostapenko, the champion of four years ago, who showed signs of recapturing her best form en route to the last eight in Rome.

Also potentially standing in Swiatek’s way is the eternal riddle wrapped in a puzzle inside an enigma that is Garbiñe Muguruza. Assuming she has recovered from the thigh injury that has hampered her preparations, the gifted but unpredictable champion of 2016 could do anything from losing her opener against the 81st-ranked Marta Kostyuk to winning a second title. 

What of Serena Williams? Four months shy of her 40th birthday, and with just one win in three matches since losing to Osaka in the Australian Open semi-finals, Williams remains in search of the elusive 24th major that would draw her level with Margaret Court on the all-time honours list. If she were to achieve that milestone in Paris, on her least favoured surface, it would probably rank as the greatest achievement of her career. Seeded seventh, the American’s path to the final is strewn with danger, with Angelique Kerber, Petra Kvitova and Aryna Sabalenka all potentially lying in wait before a projected semi-final showdown with Osaka. 

A likelier candidate to come through the bottom half of the draw is Sabalenka, who wields her racket like a hammer and seems sure to make a correspondingly significant impression at the majors before long. Seeded third following Simona Halep’s withdrawal with a calf injury, the powerful Belarusian has enjoyed an outstanding build-up to Paris, reaching the final in Stuttgart before winning the Madrid Open. Infamously, she has yet to make the last eight at a slam, an anomaly that puts down to the pressure she puts on herself. It is a habit she is determined to change. “I just have to show my level and be there 100% and wins will come,” said Sabalenka. “This is what I mentally changed … before I was really thinking about grand slams, that I really want to win [one], which does not really help you.”

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That is not an accolade the humble Mallorcan would ever claim for himself, although he could be forgiven for wondering what he must do to get a decent draw at an event where he has accumulated a century of wins. Nadal is seeded third, in line with his world ranking, and has been thrust into the top half of the draw alongside Federer and Novak Djokovic, his arch rival and likely semi-final opponent if all goes according to plan. Not that he is complaining. 

“I see it as normal,” said Nadal, who faces Australia’s Alexei Popyrin in the first round. “One player is almost 40, another is almost 35 and the other is 34. It seems logical that younger players climb the rankings. Whenever that happens you have these consequences. I’m not worried about it.” 

Given that it is five years since he last beat Nadal on a clay court, perhaps it is Djokovic who should feel worried. While the world No 1 has been inexorably making his way to the final of the Belgrade Open, where he will play the Slovak qualifier Alex Molcan on Sunday, Nadal has been quietly steeling himself for the battles that lie ahead. After sparring with Casper Ruud at his academy in Manacor earlier in the week, the Spaniard arrived in the 16th arrondissement on Wednesday for the second time in seven months, following the rescheduling of last year’s event due to the pandemic. The thought of how many majors the defending champion might have accumulated by now if the chance to compete on clay usually came around so quickly must be the stuff of Djokovic’s nightmares.

Djokovic, of course, is chasing history of his own. Should the top seed repeat his 2016 title success to move just one slam behind Nadal and Federer, he would become the first man in the Open era to win every major twice. The Serb embraces such records. Earlier this year, when he overtook Federer to set a new landmark for the most weeks at No 1 in the men’s rankings, he celebrated exuberantly with fans gathered outside the Novak 1 restaurant in his native Belgrade. On Thursday, when he beat Federico Coria in the Belgrade Open to usurp Guillermo Vilas from fifth place on the list of most matches won in the Open era, he declared himself “really fulfilled and very joyful”. Were he to get his hands on the Coupe des Mousquetaires for a second time, extracting it from his grasp might require surgical intervention.

While each passing week seems to bring up a new milestone for Djokovic, his presence in the Serbian capital on the eve of a slam highlights the chequered nature of his preparations for Paris. Dan Evans’ adroit use of slices and drop shots did for the Serb in Monte Carlo, and a semi-final defeat to Russia’s Aslan Karatsev at the following week’s Serbia Open did little to improve the world No 1’s mood. A run to the final in Rome, where he was stopped by Nadal in three sets, marked the resumption of relatively normal service, but whether that performance was enough to erase the memory of last October’s 6-0, 6-2, 7-5 humbling by the Spaniard on Court Philippe Chatrier remains to be seen. 

That said, Nadal too has shown signs of vulnerability. Andrey Rublev put paid to the Spaniard’s hopes of an 11th title in Monte Carlo, while the fifth-ranked Alexander Zverev derailed his tilt at a sixth Madrid Open. Those defeats were counterbalanced, however, by a 12th triumph at the Barcelona Open, where Nadal prevailed in three close sets against Stefanos Tsitsipas, and a 10th win at the Foro Italico, where he avenged the Zverev loss, moved level with Djokovic on 36 Masters 1000 titles and narrowed their career head-to-head to 28-29 in the Serb’s favour.

With Nadal and Djokovic lumped together in the top half of the draw, where Federer will need to find form quickly if he is to make an impression following his faltering return from a double bout of knee surgery, it is Tsitsipas who poses the greatest danger to the rest of the field. The Greek fifth seed, who has amassed a Tour-leading 33 match wins this year, set the tone for his clay-court campaign with an emotional victory in his adopted hometown of Monte Carlo, where he earned his first Masters 1000 crown at a venue where his mother, Julia Salnikova, had claimed a junior title four decades earlier. That result was followed by a run to the final in Barcelona, where Tsitsipas held a match point against Nadal, and a second title of the year in Lyon. 

The Greek, beaten by Djokovic in the semi-finals last year, is not oblivious to the opportunity afforded by the absence of the big three on his path to what would be a first grand slam final. “Finally, for once,” he quipped on Friday. This relaxed disposition should serve Tsitsipas well as he begins his title challenge against the French veteran Jeremy Chardy. Nor will the Greek be unduly perturbed by the presence in his quarter of world No 2 Daniil Medvedev. The Russian has made no attempt to disguise his antipathy to clay – “There’s always bad bounces, you’re dirty after playing – I really don’t enjoy playing on clay,” he said in Monte Carlo – and has yet to win a match at Roland Garros in four attempts. 

As for Dominic Thiem, much will much depend on his state of mind as he returns to the grand slam stage for the first time since taking a two-month break from the game. Has the fourth-ranked Austrian, twice a finalist in Paris, finally shaken off the physical and mental fatigue he seemed to suffer after the success of last year, when he won his maiden slam at the US Open?

Thiem has struggled with the restrictions imposed by the pandemic and, while a semi-final berth in Madrid seemed to offer encouragement in his pursuit of “the big goal of Roland Garros”, he described a straight-sets defeat to Cameron Norrie in Lyon as “a huge step back”. It is ironic, although hardly novel, that success should have subdued a player who so often looked hewn of granite even in defeat.

Thiem is seeded to face Alexander Zverev in the last eight, in what would be a repeat of their epic final in New York last September. The German, seeded sixth, will not be intimidated by that prospect. He beat Nadal en route to winning the Madrid Open and, having twice before made the quarter-finals in Paris, he will be eager to go further this time around.

Ultimately, though, all eyes will be on Rafa as he takes the most significant tilt at history of his storied career. Last autumn, the Spaniard arrived in Paris muttering discontentedly about the slow, cold conditions and the tournament’s switch to a less lively ball. He left with a 13th trophy. His rivals have been warned.

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