"I have no sense of humor about losing."
Rafael Nadal
The French Open, more commonly known as Roland-Garros, is one of the tennis majors. As one of the Grand Slam tournaments, it's one of the biggest and most important events on the tennis calendar alongside the Australian Open, the US Open, and Wimbledon.
The tournament has been going since 1891 and throughout that time, many a great tennis player has lifted the trophy in Paris, France.
In this article, we'll look at the men's singles champions who've won the tournament more times than anyone else, as well as a few special mentions who won the tournament in extraordinary circumstances.
We're including all the winners of the tournament going back to when it was neither a Grand Slam event nor open to professional players. Not all of these players will be household names, but you might discover some players that you've never heard of!
Ivan Lendl
The first tennis player on our list and the tenth most successful player at Roland-Garros is Ivan Lendl.
The Czech-American player enjoyed Grand Slam success during the 1980s and 90s with victories at the Australian Open in 1989 and 1990, the US Open in 1985, 1986, and 1987, and the French Open in 1984, 1986, and 1987.
Lendl famously had rivalries with tennis players such as the American John McEnroe and the Swedes Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander.
Though Lendl is tenth on the list of French Open champions, you'll see that he deserves to be higher up and the number of victories doesn't tell the full story of his successes and the high level of opponent he had to face to achieve them.
The French Open is an interesting tournament and you'll see as we progress through the most successful players, there are a few outliers due to the factors that make Roland-Garros so special.
Mats Wilander
At around the same time as Ivan Lendl, the Swedish tennis player Mats Wilander enjoyed Roland Garros victories in 1982, 1985, and 1988, with many a match disputed between the two.
Wilander's 1985 victory came against Lendl's, with Lendl coming out the victor in 1987 against him.
The two also met in the 1984 French Open semifinals, where Lendl would win, and a 1982 last 16 match with Wilander taking that one.
At the French Open, that leaves their score at 2-2, but overall, it was Lendl who had the better of Wilander with 15 victories to 7 and 5 Grand Slam victories to Wilander's 4.
However, both Wilander and Lendl can boast 4 French Open titles.
René Lacoste
Now we get to the many French players who dominated the French Open. It should be noted that when the French Open first started, it was an amateur tournament.
Before 1925, the tournament was only open to French Tennis Club members and French nationals.
This isn't to disparage the successes of the French players in the early days of the tournament, but it does go a long way to explain the domination of French players in the record books.
After all, 6 of the top 10 most successful champions of the French Open are French and nearly all of them achieved some or all of their success during this time when the competition was mostly limited to French players.
René Lacoste won his 3 French Open titles in 1925, 1927, and 1929, making the latter two during a period when the competition was open to international players but long before the tournament was part of the Open Era that allowed for professional players.
If you recognize the name, it's because René Lacoste was the creator of the Lacoste tennis shirt and the Lacoste sportswear and clothing brand.
He was one of the four great French tennis players known as the Four Musketeers, whose success gives the French Open's trophy its name, the Coupe des Mousquetaires or Musketeers' Trophy.
Maurice Germot
Maurice Germot was a French tennis player who, much like René Lacoste, won the French Open 3 times. His victories came in 1905, 1906, and 1910.
Much like the earlier champions, these victories came back when the French Open was the French Championships.
At the time, the competition was only open to French nationals or members of French tennis clubs.
This isn't to say that only French people could win the tournament.
The first ever champion in 1891 was a British tennis player called H. Briggs, who was living in Paris, France, and a member of a French tennis club.
Paul Aymé
Paul Aymé was another of the early French tennis players to dominate the tournament when it was still the French Championship by winning in four straight years in the late 19th century.
With 4 victories to his name in 1897, 1898, 1899, and 1900, he's the sixth most successful tennis player at the French Championship that would later become the French Open or Roland-Garros.
André Vacherot
Around the same time as Paul Aymé, André Vacherot was also collecting French Championship titles.
He also won 4 titles in total with championships in 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1901.
While nothing can be taken away from 4 championship titles since every player can only beat the opposition put in front of them.
Remember that the tournament was a world apart from the top level of tennis that it is today.
Henri Cochet
Henri Cochet is another of the famed Four Musketeers of tennis from the 1920s and 1930s.
His five titles came around the time when the French Championship was finding its permanent home at the Roland Garros Stadium which gives the modern version its name.
The Roland Garros Stadium (Stade Roland Garros in French) became the home of the tournament in 1928 and the tournament's men's trophy is even named after the group of players.
While Cochet and Lacoste both feature in the top ten winners, Jean Borotra only won the tournament once, and Jacques Brugnon never won the tournament at all.
Björn Borg
Björn Borg is a Swedish tennis player who won an impressive six French Open championships in the 1970s and 1980s.
Unlike all of the French players we've seen so far, he won all his championships during the Open Era, much like fellow countryman Mats Wilander and the Czech player Ivan Lendl, winning the same number of championships as those two combined!
In addition to six French Open titles, he also dominated Wimbledon around the same time, winning the tournament six times in a row between 1976 and 1980.
The US and Australian Opens, however, remained elusive and he could only manage four finals appearances in the US Open and one third-round appearance in the Australian Open.
Max Decugis
The second most decorated French Open champion is another Frenchman from the amateur era.
Max Decugis won the tournament an incredible 8 times between 1903 and 1914.
This included back-to-back champions and two separate runs of three-in-a-row victories.
He also won Wimbledon in 1911 and a gold medal for France in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics in the mixed doubles.
Naturally, his achievements need to be taken in the context of when they were achieved, but according to the record books, there's only one other tennis player ahead of him.
Rafael Nadal
Here's the tennis player that we've all been waiting for.
The Spanish player Rafael Nadal is untouchable when it comes to the French Open.
Dubbed the “King of Clay”, he's won the French Open 14 times and holds the record for most consecutive wins on a single surface in the Open Era with 81 victories!
The Musketeers' Trophy has been his for the best part of twenty years in an era where the Big Three (Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal) have dominated Grand Slam tennis, making his impressive number of victories even more astounding.
In fact, outside of the Big Three, only the Swiss Player Stan Warwinka has won the French Open since Nadal won his first title in 2005, with Federer also winning once and Djokovic winning three times.
The unique nature of the French Open has made it a tournament where certain players excel though other would-be champions don't enjoy as much success as at the other majors.
Honorable Mentions
Because the most successful players are sorted by when they achieved their victories, more modern players like Gustavo Kuerten from Brazil and the aforementioned Novak Djokovic sit in 11th and 12th respectively overall when you look at the all-time records (as we've been doing).
Both deserve a mention because not only did they achieve as many French Open titles, but they both did it in far more competitive eras when the tournament was open to professional competitors.
Impressively, Novak Djokovic's three titles came during a competitive era when Nadal was dominating the tournament and other great players were regularly competing in the tournament.
Djokovic is the most recent winner of the French Open and has ten Australian Open titles, has won Wimbledon seven times, and was the US Open champion on four separate occasions. That's 24 Grand Slam men's singles titles for anyone keeping count!
We also need to mention Yannick Noah, who became the first Frenchman to win the tournament in nearly 40 years with his victory against the impressive Mats Wilander in 1983.
Naturally, in an article on the top 10 men's players, we didn't mention any of the incredible female tennis players who won the French Open, but there's a whole article dedicated to them, too!
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