Serena Williams pulled through with the aid of a doctor at the French Open yesterday, but there was no reviving Andy Roddick as he packed up his kit bag and headed off to find some grass-courts.
Top seed Williams shrugged off a funny turn midway through her third-round match against Russian teenager Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, before recovering her senses to win 6-1, 1-6, 6-2 and join sister Venus in the last 16.
Fellow American Roddick was trounced in straight sets by Teimuraz Gabashvili — his misfiring game no match for the flashy Russian or the cool, breezy conditions that returned to Roland Garros after the glorious sunshine of “Frantic Friday.”
PHOTO: AFP
“I fought through a couple of matches that were a little dicey. Today, I got outplayed from the first ball,” Roddick, who will now begin his preparations for Wimbledon, told reporters after his 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 defeat to a qualifier ranked 114 in the world rankings.
Roddick angrily through his spare rackets to his entourage after dropping his serve in the seventh game, complaining about string tensions. By the time they returned to a chilly Court Suzanne Lenglen, it was virtually all over.
“I felt like I wasn’t getting much on the ball, so I kind of threw them in and wanted some looser tensions,” Roddick said. “By the time I got them in I think I was down two breaks in the third. Little too late to experiment.”
The 27-year-old’s mood was not helped by the balls rolling into the wet tarpaulins used to cover the courts.
“If a ball rolls through a puddle enough times, can you tell me what happens to it? Then when clay attaches to it, it doesn’t get lighter?” Roddick asked.
Spain’s David Ferrer also joined Roddick on the casualty list, the ninth seed surprisingly beaten in straight sets by Austrian Jurgen Melzer, who now faces Gabashvili for a place in the quarter-finals.
After Friday’s champagne tennis when organizers got the tournament schedule back on track with a feast of top seeds in action, the middle weekend began with a hangover.
Hopes that home favorite Aravane Rezai would lift the mood evaporated when she lost what amounted to a sudden death shoot-out against Russia’s Nadia Petrova.
Starting at 7-7 in the deciding third set after darkness interrupted a thrilling match the previous evening, 15th seed Rezai was back off court in 15 minutes after Petrova held her nerve to prevail 10-8.
Marion Bartoli also lost her third-round match against Israel’s Shahar Peer to leave Jo-Wilfried Tsonga as the only home player left in the singles draw.
Williams lost her opening service game of the morning to the 18-year-old, but rattled off the next six in what looked to be shaping up as a gentle morning workout.
The 28-year-old, shooting for a 13th Grand Slam singles title, then slumped 5-0 down in the second set and called for the trainer and the doctor at the changeover.
After having her pulse taken and her temperature checked, she emerged rather gingerly before losing the set.
She resisted some aggressive play early in the third set and saved two break-points, before regaining control and clinching victory in 1 hour, 48 minutes.
On Friday in the women’s doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Yung-jan and her partner, Zheng Jie of China, defeated Regina Kulikova of Russia and Latvia’s Anastasija Sevastova 6-4, 6-3.
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