World No. 2 Andy Murray completed his recovery from a two-set deficit against Czech veteran Radek Stepanek to advance to the French Open second round yesterday.
Murray was up a break in the fourth, but trailing by two sets to one when play was suspended on Monday due to darkness, but the Scot returned to close out a 3-6, 3-6, 6-0, 6-3, 7-5 win over the 37-year-old.
“He’s always been extremely difficult to play,” Murray said after a match which lasted 3 hours, 41 minutes.
Photo: AP
“He was playing drop-shots, hitting the ball very flat, it was very difficult to get into a rhythm. That’s credit to him and the way he played,” Murray said. “Both of us had chances in the fifth set. Thankfully, I was able to take mine at the end when he made a couple of mistakes.”
Second seed Murray stunned Novak Djokovic to win the Rome Masters earlier this month, but he struggled mightily against the crafty Stepanek on Court Phillipe Chatrier.
The Scot dropped serve twice in the opening set to fall behind and Stepanek, the oldest player in the draw, called upon his vast experience to carve out a two-set lead.
Photo: AP
However, Murray showed his resolve and raced through the third set in just 18 minutes as former world No. 8 Stepanek began to lose his way in the fading light.
The Scot charged into a 4-2 lead in the fourth set before play was halted on Monday, but Murray returned to polish it off and force a decider when play resumed yesterday.
Murray next faces world No. 164 Mathias Bourgue for a place in the last 32.
Rafael Nadal started his quest for a record-breaking 10th French Open title in merciless fashion, demolishing Australian Sam Groth 6-1, 6-1, 6-1.
The fourth seed, who next faces either Argentine Facundo Bagnis or French qualifier Kenny de Schepper, played flawless tennis throughout, making only three unforced errors in a one-sided match.
The Spaniard, who turns 30 next week, has won two titles on clay this season, including the Monte Carlo Masters last month.
He ended his opponent’s misery with a trademark cross-court forehand winner on his second match point on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
In the women’s singles, Angelique Kerber discovered that being the newest member of the Grand Slam winner’s club did not earn her any free points as the Australian Open champion succumbed to a 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 first-round defeat by Kiki Bertens.
The German third seed’s first Grand Slam match since triumphing at Melbourne Park in January ended in pain and despair as a shoulder injury prevented her from making much impact against the hard-hitting Dutchwoman.
Kerber stepped on court wearing a striking black and white outfit, but over the course of the next hour and 41 minutes her mood had turned as gray as the dark clouds hovering over Roland Garros.
“I’m disappointed that I lost the first round here … that was for sure not my best tennis I played today,” the 28-year-old, who took a medical time out in the third set, told reporters. “I tried to fight, but she played good then in the important moments.”
The result completed a hat-trick of losses for Kerber, who suffered back-to-back defeats in her opening matches in Madrid and Rome.
The clay-court season, which had started so promisingly for the 28-year-old when she captured the title in Stuttgart, ended with a whimper on a cold, overcast day in front of rows of empty seats on Philippe Chatrier Court.
World No. 58 Bertens, who won the Nuremberg title last weekend, next faces Italian Camila Giorgi.
French teenager Tessah Andrianjafitrimo suffered a nightmare debut at Roland Garros when she was crushed 6-0, 6-0 by China’s Qiang Wang.
The 17-year-old was completely overwhelmed as she experienced the dreaded “double bagel” on Court 17.
After her 51-minute drubbing she admitted that next time she should listen to her coach.
“I didn’t listen to my coach a lot. I wanted to be on my own, but I have lots of things to learn. I’m still a young player and I wanted to behave as an adult would behave,” she told a news conference. “I have learned that I should stick to my routine. I should listen to my coach, even more today.”
Meanwhile, former champion Francesca Schiavone received a standing ovation from the crowd after it was announced she was retiring, but that was news to her.
“Roland Garros announced my retirement, but I didn’t,” said the 35-year-old Italian, who was champion in 2010 and runner-up 12 months later. “So you can stand up and go back to work in the office because I didn’t say that. I will announce when I want to stop.”
Schiavone, playing her 16th Roland Garros, lost 6-2, 6-4 to 26th seed Kristina Mladenovic of France before being accorded a premature standing ovation by the crowd on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
On Monday, Stan Wawrinka avoided becoming the first defending champion to lose in the first round.
Wawrinka needed five tough sets to get past combative and feisty Czech Lukas Rosol.
The third seed fired 56 winners, but committed 46 unforced errors and needed to save eight break points to book a second-round clash against Japan’s Taro Daniel.
Wawrinka, 31, had defeated world No. 59 Rosol in the semi-finals of the Geneva clay-court tournament on Friday last week, but Rosol went into the match on a chilly Court Philippe Chatrier with the pedigree of having famously stunned Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2012.
That free-swinging masterclass almost paid dividends again, but once he had let slip two break points at 2-2 in the fourth set his hopes slowly faded.
“He’s typically very aggressive and puts a lot of pressure. That’s what he did today,” said Wawrinka of a match played out in temperatures of just 12?C. “I was very happy to pick up the fifth set in spite of the cold.”
Japanese fifth seed Kei Nishikori reached the second round with a 6-1, 7-5, 6-3 win over Simone Bolelli of Italy.
Nishikori goes on to face Russia’s Andrey Kuznetsov after finishing off a first-round tie which had been suspended overnight with him leading 2-1 in the third set.
It was a 50th career Grand Slam win for Nishikori who made the quarter-finals in Paris last year.
Tenth-seeded former US Open champion Marin Cilic suffered his earliest loss at a Grand Slam in five years when Argentine qualifier Marco Trungelliti clinched a shock 7-6 (7/4), 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 win.
It was only the fourth career victory for the 26-year-old world No. 166.
In the women’s singles, Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza struggled on Court Suzanne Lenglen, coming back from a set down to defeat Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
Muguruza, who was knocked out in the quarter-finals the previous two years, next takes on French wild-card Myrtille Georges, the world No. 203.
Wearing a long-sleeved top like most of the women, Muguruza fired 44 winners, but hit 53 unforced errors and had to save 17 of 21 break points.
“It was so cold. Even though I was running and playing, I felt like cold. I thought it was going to rain. I was looking to the sky,” Muguruza told reporters.
Seeds falling by the wayside included seventh seed Roberta Vinci, the Italian who stunned Serena Williams at the US Open semi-finals last year.
The 33-year-old suffered a third successive first-round exit in Paris, going down 6-1, 6-3 to Kateryna Bondarenko, who had not won a match at the French Open since 2010.
Vinci’s 16th-seeded compatriot Sara Errani, the 2012 runner-up, lost 6-3, 6-2 to 2010 Wimbledon semi-finalist Tsvetana Pironkova.
Twenty-seven-year-old second seed Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland brushed aside Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski 6-0, 6-2.
Jovanovski, the world No. 120, is still without a win this year.
Romanian sixth seed Simona Halep, the 2014 runner-up, took just 43 minutes to defeat Japan’s Nao Hibino 6-2, 6-0.
Play started two-and-a-half hours late because of rain, with 12 of the 66 scheduled matches pushed back to yesterday.
Another six were later suspended.
However, there was time for a notable first on Monday.
Qualifier Cagla Buyukakcay beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 5-7, 7-6 (7/2), 6-2 to become the first Turkish woman in the Open era to reach the second round of a Grand Slam.
Canadian eighth seed Milos Raonic, a 2014 quarter-finalist, defeated Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (7/5).
Tipsarevic was playing his first Roland Garros since 2013 after being treated for a benign tumor on his left foot.
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