Garbine Muguruza will defend her French Open title with the woman she beat in last year's final conspicuous by her absence at Roland Garros.

Serena Williams is will not feature at the second major of the year, the 23-time grand slam champion taking a break from the WTA Tour to have her first child.

Muguruza is aiming to do something no woman has done since 2007 in successfully defending her crown.

Standing in her way will be world number one Angelique Kerber, as well as the likes of Karolina Pliskova and 2014 finalist Simona Halep, who has been in impressive form but comes into the tournament on the back of an ankle injury suffered in the final in Rome.

Here, with the help of Opta, we look at some of the key facts in the women's singles at Roland Garros.

- Garbine Muguruza is aiming to become the first woman to win successive French Open titles since Justine Henin (2005, 2006, 2007). 

- Muguruza has reached the last eight in three of her four appearances at Roland Garros (quarter-finals in 2014 and 2015, winner in 2016).

- This will be the first grand slam that Serena Williams has missed since the 2011 French Open. She had reached the final in three of her last four appearances at Roland Garros.

- In the women's singles in the Open era the title has never been won by a non-seeded player, something that has happened three times in the men's singles: 1982 (Mats Wilander), 1997 (Gustavo Kuerten) and 2004 (Gaston Gaudio).

- Simona Halep reached the French Open final in 2014, in her six other appearances at Roland Garros she has never made it past the fourth round.

- Angelique Kerber has been involved in three of the last five grand slam finals (winner at Australian Open and US Open in 2016, runner-up at Wimbledon 2016).

- Kerber's last two grand slam defeats have been against American opponents (v Serena Williams in the 2016 Wimbledon final and v Coco Vandeweghe in the last 16 of the 2017 Australian Open).

- Karolina Pliskova has at least reached the quarter-finals in her last two grand slam appearances (including the US Open final), after failing to reach the last 16 in her first 17.

- The last 16 women who won the first set of the Roland Garros final have also won the match.