Paris: Australian Open runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga withdrew from the French Open on Saturday because of an injured right knee and will have surgery next week.

Tsonga said the injury occurred before he pulled out of the Davis Cup quarter final loss to the US in April.

“Since then it was a test to see whether it would hold up,” said Tsonga, who pulled out of his semi-final match at a clay-court warm-up in Casablanca on Friday. “I reached the critical time when I needed an operation before it’s too late.”

Nicolas Kiefer of Germany and Fabio Fognini of Italy also pulled out a day before the French Open begins.

Tsonga, who was seeded 14th at the clay-court major, has been bothered by his knee for about a month. He said he would need three to four months to recover.

“After long discussions with my doctors and knee specialist, I made the decision not to play the French Open and to have surgery next week,” said Tsonga, who will be replaced in the draw by Luis Horna of Peru.

Tsonga reached the Australian Open final this year, beating Rafael Nadal in the semi-finals before losing to Novak Djokovic.

“It’s enormously frustrating,” the Frenchman said. “To play very well in any Grand Slam is super, but to play very well at Roland Garros would have been magic.”

While Nadal will be aiming to extend his own record and become the first man to win four French Open trophies in four visits to Paris, he knows that his supremacy is under serious threat this year.

For the first time, there is more than one bona fide rival lurking close by and ready to wrest his crown away.

Since 2005, the Federer-Nadal duopoly had become a familiar sight in men’s tennis.

Nadal reigned supreme in Paris while Federer grabbed everything else. The pair also contested the Paris and Wimbledon finals in each of the last two years.

Djokovic may be ranked third in the world behind Federer and Nadal, but he is the No. 1 in what the ATP calls the Race, which measures only performances since the start of the season.

Like the Swiss master, Djokovic boasts an all-court game but more importantly, he has built up his endurance over the past 12 months and this may turn out to be his main weapon on the slow red dirt over the next fortnight.

Meanwhile, Justine Henin’s decision to call it quits at 25 earlier this month has not so much left a hole at the top of the French Open draw as a gaping chasm which new world No. 1 Maria Sharapova will be aching to fill.

With Henin gone, Williams, victor over sister Venus in the 2002 final, is the only former champion in the field, and form and history point elsewhere for the successor to the diminutive Belgian’s crown.

The closest Sharapova, 21, has come to winning on the red dust in Paris was last year, but a crushing 6-2, 6-1 loss to Ana Ivanovic in the semis suggested she may never win a slam away from the faster courts of Flushing Meadow and Wimbledon.

Sharapova exacted sweet revenge when she beat Ivanovic in the Australian Open final in January and victory in the season-ending Tour Championships in Madrid two months earlier suggested a steelier resolve than previously shown.

Despite a niggling calf injury she looks well set to break her Paris duck. (Agencies)