Roland Garros 2018, Day 12: Match Points

LEARNING

Simona Halep and Garbiñe Muguruza will clash with the World No.1 ranking on the line: whoever wins will emerge from Roland Garros in the top spot. If Muguruza loses, she will remain World No.3.

Neither player has lost a French Open semifinal before: on Halep's two previous appearances at this stage, she defeated Andrea Petkovic (2014) and Karolina Pliskova

View Profile (2017) before finishing as runner-up; on Muguruza's prior showing in the last four (2016), she beat Samantha Stosur before going on to lift her first Slam trophy. Indeed, Muguruza has never lost a major semifinal anywhere: she is 3-0 at this stage across all the Slams.

Halep and Muguruza have played four times to date, with the Spaniard capturing three of those matches: in the second round of Wuhan in 2014, a Fed Cup first-round rubber in 2015, and - most recently - a 6-1, 6-0 rout in last year's Cincinnati final. However, their only previous clay encounter was won by Halep, 3-6, 6-1, 6-3 in the second round of Stuttgart in 2015.

Australian Open runner-up Simona Halep is bidding to become the first player to reach back-to-back Slam finals since Serena Williams at Roland Garros and Wimbledon in 2016. The last time a player other than Serena accomplished this was Victoria Azarenka

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All four semifinalists have previously played a Slam final. The last time this occurred was at Roland Garros in 2013, when Serena Williams defeated Sara Errani

View Profile and Maria Sharapova beat Victoria Azarenka

View Profile - also the last time the final four at the French Open  were all Top 16 seeds.

Only Garbiñe Muguruza is a previous senior champion in Paris, but Simona Halep and Sloane Stephens are both past junior winners. Halep defeated Elena Bogdan 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-2 to take the girls' singles crown in 2008, while Stephens partnered with Timea Babos to beat Lara Arruabarrena and María-Teresa Torró-Flor to win the girls' doubles title in 2010.

The semifinal between Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys

View Profile reprises last year's US Open final, won by Stephens 6-3, 6-0. The No.10 seed also won their only other previous meeting, in the first round of Miami in 2015, 6-4, 6-2.

It is the first all-American semifinal at Roland Garros since 2002, when Serena Williams defeated Jennifer Capriati 3-6, 7-6(2), 6-2 before going on to defeat Venus Williams in the final to win her second Slam. Since then, there have been 11 major semifinals played between compatriots, of which four have been between Americans: Serena Williams beating Lindsay Davenport at the 2002 US Open and  Madison Keys

View Profile at the 2015 Australian Open, Venus Williams triumphing over CoCo Vandeweghe at the 2017 Australian Open and Keys defeating Vandeweghe at the 2017 US Open.

This is the 10-year anniversary of the last all-compatriot semifinals at Roland Garros, when Ana Ivanovic beat Jelena Jankovic 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 in an all-Serbian derby - the only match between Serbs at this stage of a major to date - and Dinara Safina defeated Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-3, 6-2 in the third most recent all-Russian Slam semifinal clash. Ivanovic went on to win her only Slam title over Safina.

Madison Keys

View Profile is now the youngest player to have reached three major semifinals, a title previously held by Eugenie Bouchard. In each of those semifinals, Keys has played a fellow American: Serena Williams at the 2015 Australian Open, CoCo Vandeweghe at the 2017 US Open and Sloane Stephens today. The only players younger than Keys to have reached the last four of a Slam are Elise Mertens

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Having simultaneously become the 13th and 14th active players to reach quarterfinals at all four Slams this week, Madison Keys

View Profile and Sloane Stephens have also become the 11th and 12th active players to reach semifinals at at least three different Slams. The others are Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Victoria Azarenka

View Profile , Maria Sharapova, Simona Halep, Angelique Kerber, Petra Kvitova, Vera Zvonareva, Jelena Jankovic and Eugenie Bouchard.

Sloane Stephens is guaranteed to rise to a new career high of at least World No.6 following the French Open, and if she wins her semifinal will move to No.4. Madison Keys

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TRENDING

READING

Madison Keys

View Profile has been playing "with aplomb rather than angst" in Paris this year, writes Bonnie D. Ford for ESPN - and that's why she could overturn the head-to-head against Sloane Stephens in the semifinals. Meanwhile, the Americans' "no boundaries" friendship and close-knit relationship could be key to their tandem success on a tour that can overwhelming, writes Briana Foust at Tennis With An Accent.

Serena Williams' return to the Grand Slam stage ended in disappointment as the 23-time major champion suffered a pectoral injury that forced her to withdraw from her fourth-round match against Maria Sharapova - but, says WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen, Serena's MRI results have been positive and the form she showed on court promising for her comeback in the longer term.

WATCHING

Madison Keys

View Profile ' quarterfinal defeat of Yulia Putintseva

View Profile was an absorbing stylistic contrast that overturned a 0-3 head-to-head stretching back to the pair's junior days for the American. Revisit how she did it here.