PARIS — Her fate left to the whims of a randomization algorithm, Serena Williams landed in a comfortable part of the French Open draw on Thursday, with a first-round match against 70th-ranked Kristyna Pliskova.
Williams, playing her first Grand Slam event since giving birth in September to her daughter, Olympia, is unseeded and could have been drawn against any of the other 127 women in the field. She has never played Pliskova.
In the second round, Williams would face either 17th-seeded Ashleigh Barty, who has never defeated a top-50 player on clay, or 81st-ranked Natalia Vikhlyantseva.
Among Williams’s possible third-round opponents are 11th-seeded Julia Goerges, 36th-ranked Dominika Cibulkova, 46th-ranked Alison Van Uytvanck, or the 248th-ranked wild card Isabelle Wallace.