Defending champion Svetlana Kuznetsova reeled off 11 of the last 12 games to move into the French Open second round with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Romania’s Sorana Cirstea yesterday.
The 24-year-old Kuznetsova arrived in Paris having won just one claycourt match this season and was in trouble early on against her 20-year-old opponent, who made the quarter-finals last year.
Kuznetsova was 1-3 down as Cirstea, the world number 34 and who just missed out on a seeding, quickly settled into her rhythm on a sweltering spring day in the French capital.
However, the Russian, who had won the pair’s only other clash in the second round of the 2008 US Open, rattled off the next five games to claim the opener after 38 minutes on Court Philippe Chatrier.
Kuznetsova then sped into a 3-0 lead in the second set before Cirstea got on the board again.
BACK ON TOP
However, the champion was quickly back on top, wrapping up the tie after 72 minutes.
The Russian sixth-seed will now face Germany’s Andrea Petkovic, who beat Elena Vesnina 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, for a place in the last 32.
“I was not showing the good results I would have liked to, but I knew this moment has to pass because I deserve better than that,” Kuznetsova said as she reflected on her poor claycourt form coming into Paris. “I worked harder than these results showed. I was just concerned about when it was going to pass.”
Also going through in early action were Slovakia’s 26th-seed Dominika Cibulkova, a semi-finalist last year, who edged Russia’s Ekaterina Ivanova 6-2, 6-0.
South African qualifier Chanelle Scheepers reached the second round of a Grand Slam for the first time when she defeated France’s Mathilde Johansson 6-2, 6-4.
However, the 26-year-old from Pretoria, South Africa, isn’t expecting her performance to cause too many shockwaves in a country about to be gripped by football World Cup fever.
“It won’t make a great difference. It’s always hard trying to promote tennis in South Africa,” said Scheepers, the world No. 133, who is the first South African to make the second round in Paris since Amanda Coetzer nine years ago.
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