Buying Tickets for The French Open

Hello,
I'm planning to go to Paris at around the end of May - start of June as a family trip (I'm from Israel).
When I heard that the tournament starts on May 25th, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to watch it while I'm there.
I tried to find out a bit about buying tickets, and discovered that now, after the ballot / lottery, the only practical way to get some (or even one!) is queuing on the day or buying them from touts. Now, I came up with a few questions:

1) Is it really so? Are these the only ways to get tickets? If I decide to queue on the day, when should I come and how long should I wait? Is it anything like Wimbledon...? And if I decide to buy from the touts...?

2) Will I be able to buy tickets also for the 3 main stadiums or only for the small courts? Should I come earlier if I want to get tickets for the main ones?

3) When, in your opinion, is the best date to go? For example, I wouldn't want to see the qualifying stage, and would also less like to see the boys/girls/doubles matches - I mainly want to see the singles. I'm afraid that if I go close to the end of the tournament, for example, I will not be able to see the big games in the main courts (is that true?), and there won't be any singles games in the small ones. Any ideas?

4) What type of games should I expect to see in the small courts? Anything like Wimbledon? Worse? Better?

If you have any other information, even if it does not regard my previous questions, please share it with me.
I'd really appreciate any kind of help.
Thanks in advance,
Jonathan

1) Yes it IS the only option. You may try to get some ticket for MD during qualies as there are less people queuing but usually they don't give out a lot... You can buy from the touts but be prepared to bargain and pay a lot of money... (and don't be surprised if almost none of them talks properly in english... most of them even have trouble with frenc actually :lol: ) You have to get up early in order to have a good place in the queue anyway.

2)Normally you can also get tickets for the main stadiums, though usually, the only places left are the most expensive ones (but you might get lucky)

3) If you wannasee singles matches on showcourts, you'll have to go before themid-satruday, from the sunday on, show courts tickets are cheaper (14€ a day I think), but you only have doubles, mixed & juniors.

4) I've ,ever been to Wimbleodn so cannot tell you, but that should be a little bit worse for two main reasons : 1st round is played on 3 days instead of 2, there are 3 main courts (non accessible with ground tickets) instead of 2 and they do play on mid-sunday, so that takes out more "known" players. The good thing is that french players usually plays on main courts so for the first two rounds you can still expect to have a few top 15 players. (The year after her final, Dementieva was scheduled for her first round on Show Court 2...)

If I plan to go on thursday 29th and buy a center court ticket at the ticket booth, when should I go for queueing? 5AM? 6AM? or 3AM?
Anybody has any idea?

Best,