A Grounds Pass is really two different experiences stacked into one ticket, and most first-timers only plan for the first one. The obvious use is watching actual matches on the outer courts, numbered 2 through 14, general admission, first-come seating. The less obvious use, and arguably the better one, is arriving before 10am and finding a spot at the practice courts where the top seeds are warming up for matches that haven't started yet.
There's no separate ticket for this. If a top-10 player is scheduled to play that afternoon, they're very likely drilling on one of the grounds' practice courts that morning, often with a crowd of a few dozen rather than a few thousand. Standing 10 metres from a player you'd otherwise watch from the upper tier of a grandstand, with no upgrade required beyond the Grounds Pass already in your pocket, is one of the genuine insider moves at any Grand Slam. Jean-Bouin, the FFT's larger nine-court training facility a few blocks from the main site, is a different story — during the tournament fortnight the entire club is privatized for player training and closed to the public, so this practice-watching happens on-grounds, not there.
Court 14 is the outside court worth specifically seeking out once the actual matches start. Inaugurated in 2018, it's semi-sunken into the Fonds des Princes extension, 2,200 seats wrapped tight around the action with standing room behind both baselines. French players actively want to be drawn here in the first week, because the crowd is loud, partisan, and dedicated to noise from the first point to the last in a way the bigger show courts rarely match. Courts 6, 7, 9, 12 and 13 run a similar close-quarters energy at a smaller scale — this is where first-round matches involving ranked professionals play out in front of audiences small enough that you can hear the players talking to themselves between points.
Grounds Pass prices start around €30 for early-round weekday passes and climb through the tournament. Access covers every outer court plus Simonne-Mathieu's upper level, practice courts, and the fan zones — everything except Chatrier and Lenglen themselves.
Why it's special
Match tennis is the tennis everyone plans for. Practice tennis is the tennis nobody mentions until they've done it once and realized how good it is. A player working through serve patterns or backhand drills with their coach, twenty feet away, unguarded and unhurried, tells you more about how they actually play than a scoreboard ever does — and it costs nothing beyond the ticket you were buying anyway.
