Rafael Nadal seeded No. 3 for French Open

Seven-time champion Rafael Nadal could face top-seeded Novak Djokovic in the French Open semifinals a year after they met to decide the title.
Friday's draw for the clay-court Grand Slam tournament placed Nadal and Djokovic on the same half of the field, while Roger Federer could face David Ferrer in the other semifinal.
Federer, the owner of a record 17 major titles including the 2009 French Open, will face a qualifier in the first round — and if he wins that, he'll play a qualifier in the second round, too.

Djokovic faces a far more intriguing start: The reigning Australian Open champion's first-round opponent is David Goffin, a 22-year-old Belgian who took a set off Federer in the fourth round in Paris last year after making it that far as a lucky loser.
No man has won the title at Roland Garros as many times as Nadal, who broke a tie with six-time champion Bjorn Borg by defeating Djokovic in last year's final and is 52-1 for his French Open career. Nadal also has reached the finals of all eight tournaments he's played in 2013.
But because the Spaniard missed about seven months with a left knee injury, his ranking slipped to No. 4, and the French Open decided not to bump him to a higher seeding.
If the tournament, which starts Sunday, had placed Nadal at No. 2, he and No. 1 Djokovic could have met only in the final; instead, a Nadal-Djokovic rematch for the championship can't happen in 2013.
"If you're not Nos. 1 and 2 of the world," Nadal said, "that can happen."
Jean Gachassin, president of the French tennis federation, said Friday his group has not yet discussed whether to switch to a seeding system similar to Wimbledon's, which takes into account past results on a specific surface rather than only the ATP rankings.
"That will be a debate that we will have after this French Open," Gachassin said.
Nadal has lost eight of his last 11 matches against Djokovic, including on clay at Monte Carlo last month.
"It definitely gave me the confidence boost," Djokovic said about that most recent encounter against the Spaniard. "Winning against Nadal on clay is not something that happens every day, you know. It's a big challenge."
Nadal is seeded No. 3 because second-ranked Andy Murray, the reigning U.S. Open champion, withdrew from the French Open with a back injury.
The possible men's quarterfinals are: Djokovic against No. 8 Janko Tipsarevic, his Davis Cup teammate for Serbia; Nadal against No. 7 Richard Gasquet of France; No. 2 Federer against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France; and No. 4 Ferrer against No. 5 Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic.