Venus Williams made a great escape into the French Open last 32 on Thursday while 13th seeded Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli merely made an exhausting list of excuses for her second round defeat.
Williams, the third seed, who was runner-up to sister Serena in 2002 but had exited at the third round in the last two years, saved a match point in her 6-7 (5/7), 6-2, 7-5 win over the Czech Republic’s Lucie Safarova.
The Wimbledon champion had been trailing by a set when the players had been called off court late on Wednesday, but she quickly leveled the tie on the resumption.
PHOTO: AFP
Safarova then failed to convert a match point on her own serve when 5-4 ahead in the decider and Williams made her pay by breaking the Czech before going on to set-up a third round clash with Hungary’s Agnes Szavay.
Former Wimbledon finalist Bartoli was a second round casualty losing 6-3, 7-5 to experienced Italian Tathiana Garbin.
Bartoli blamed her defeat on a host of problems, from illness to the chilly conditions to the noise made by a small contingent of Italian fans.
“I was a little tired and a little sick, I had a sore throat and my nose is running,” said the Frenchwoman.
“It was very cold and the court was heavy. The ball was stuck on the strings and it was very slow,” she said.
Bartoli was unimpressed by the attitude of Garbin’s supporters.
“It’s her clan. When I made unforced errors, her team would shout. It’s not sporting. They’re Italians. This is what it’s like,” she said.
Serbian fifth seed Jelena Jankovic, a semi-finalist in the last two years and who lunched with Serbian President Boris Tadic on Wednesday, continued her untroubled progress with a 6-1, 6-2 win over Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova.
Jankovic will next face Slovakian-born Jarmila Groth, who now plays for Australia.
The 24-year-old Jankovic, who won the Marbella claycourt event in the run-up to Roland Garros, believes weight loss is helping a rejuvenation of the game which took her to the world No. 1 spot last year.
“I’m back to my normal weight. Maybe I had seven kilos more than I have now, which is a lot for me. When you put that kind of weight on, and you are not used to it, it’s tough to move around,” Jankovic said.
Russian seventh seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 2006 runner-up, also eased through to the last 32 beating Galina Voskoboeva 6-0, 6-2 while Danish 10th seed Caroline Wozniacki breezed past American veteran Jill Craybas 6-1, 6-4.
In the men’s singles, Argentine fifth seed Juan Martin del Potro reached the last 32 with a 6-3, 7-5, 6-0 win over Serbia’s Victor Troicki yesterday.
Tenth seed Nikolay Davydenko of Russia beat Argentina’s Diego Junqueira 4-6, 6-3, 6-0, 6-2.
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