Former champion Ana Ivanovic reached the French Open round-of-16 yesterday in just 53 minutes, while Alize Cornet kept home hopes alive by making the second week for the first time.
Serbian seventh seed Ivanovic, the 2008 champion at Roland Garros, triumphed over 18-year-old Donna Vekic of Croatia 6-0, 6-3.
In dramatic contrast, 29th seed Cornet needed two-and-a-half hours to defeat 33-year-old Croatian Mirjana Lucic-Baroni 4-6, 6-3, 7-5 in a match scarred by 85 unforced errors.
Photo: AFP
Ivanovic won the first seven games before Vekic, the world No. 165 playing in the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time, stopped the rot and broke for 2-1 in the second set, but that was as good as it got for the teenager as Ivanovic, watched by German soccer star boyfriend Bastian Schweinsteiger, swept into a fourth round to face either ninth seed Ekaterina Makarova or Elena Vesnina.
“After my first two matches, I have really started to get a little bit of feeling and groove,” said the Serb, who had to come back from losing the opening set in her first two matches in Paris.
Elina Svitolina, the 19th-seeded Ukrainian reached the fourth round of a Slam for the first time.
Photo: Reuters
She defeated fellow former French Open junior champion Annika Beck of Germany 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.
Svitolina goes on to meet Cornet, who made the second week for the first time at the 11th attempt.
Lucic-Baroni, who made her debut in Paris in 1999, built up a 5-1 lead on her way to taking the first set on a blustery Court Philippe Chatrier.
Cornet, 25, hit back in an error-strewn second set which saw five breaks of serve in nine games.
The Frenchwoman served for the match at 5-4 in the decider, but allowed her opponent to level when she lobbed a second serve into the wrong side of the court.
However, Lucic-Baroni, the world No. 70, was not able to capitalize and after the 13th break of serve of the match in the 11th game, it was Cornet who emerged triumphant.
Lucic-Baroni, who knocked out third seed Simona Halep in the second round, committed 59 unforced errors.
“It was difficult, she hits the ball very hard,” Cornet said. “I had a terrible start, but I came back with courage. It’s magical.”
In the men’s singles, Richard Gasquet made it seven French players into the third round, stirring hopes of a realistic home title challenge.
That equaled the second-best showing for French players at the round-of-32 stage in Paris in the Open era (since 1968), beaten only by the eight men who made it that far in 1971.
Gasquet, a former Wimbledon semi-finalist, finally saw off the challenge of Argentine clay-court specialist Carlos Berlocq 3-6, 6-3, 6-1, 4-6, 6-1 after the match had been suspended overnight.
His reward is a third-round tie against South African Kevin Anderson.
“Yeah, we are a lot in the third round. I saw maybe six or seven. It’s a lot,” Gasquet said of the French charge. “I hope we can go further in the tournament. Of course, the best players are coming in the draw. Everybody is playing a seeded player now.”
Also through to the third round in the top half of the draw was Jeremy Chardy, who is due to take on Belgium’s David Goffin today, while five other French hopes were in action in the bottom half of the draw yesterday.
The last home winner of the men’s singles at the French Open, and of any Grand Slam tournament, was Yannick Noah in 1983, with Henri Leconte the last to reach the final in 1988, where he lost to Mats Wilander.
Since then Leconte in 1992, Cedric Pioline (1998), Sebastien Grosjean (2001), Monfils (2008) and Tsonga (2013) have all fallen at the semi-final stage.
On Thursday, the pre-tournament shortlist of favorites for the French Open women’s crown continued to shrink and for a while it looked as though top seed, Serena Williams, would also vanish.
Williams, 33, faced unheralded 21-year-old German Anna-Lena Friedsam and it looked like a mismatch, but world No. 105 Friedsam gave the 19-time Grand Slam champion a torrid time on Court Suzanne Lenglen, taking the first set before a nervy Williams recovered to scrape into the third round 5-7, 6-3, 6-3.
Twice former champion Williams has suffered at the French Open before — last year when she was beaten by Spain’s Garbine Muguruza at the same stage and more memorably in 2012 when France’s Virginie Razzano knocked her out in the first round.
With the American’s ground-strokes sailing over the baseline and even her fearsome serve deserting her in the first set — she was broken three times — another blot on her incredible Grand Slam record loomed.
Even when she led 4-2 in the second set, Williams appeared shaky, going 0-40 down and dropping serve, but once she got level and broke Friedsam’s serve at the start of the decider she relaxed.
“A win is a win and as long as you live to survive the next day, you can always improve,” Williams said. “I know my level is literally a hundred times better than I played today.”
She will have to sharpen up against former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus in the next round.
In contrast to the women, the men’s favorites have been largely untroubled and that continued as holder Rafael Nadal, top seed Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray reached the third round.
All eyes have been on Nadal as the Spaniard battles to rediscover his mojo and claim a 10th French Open title, but there were few weaknesses on show as he beat compatriot Nicolas Almagro with relative ease.
Nadal took his stunning Roland Garros record to 68-1 with a routine 6-4, 6-3, 6-1 victory — his fourth without dropping a set against Almagro on the Paris clay.
Djokovic needed an injury timeout when he slipped in a straight-sets win over Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller, although he looked untroubled when shaking hands with watching Swedish soccer great Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“I made a couple of slides that were quite unusual and it happened in those dynamic movements, I jammed the hip a little bit. Thankfully, it’s nothing serious,” said the Serb, who next faces Australian upstart Thanasi Kokkinakis.
Third seed Murray was given a fight by Portugal’s Joao Sousa, but came through 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 to set up a clash with Nick Kyrgios.
Some of the biggest cheers came elsewhere in the grounds.
Kokkinakis beat his country’s former great hope Bernard Tomic in a cliffhanger, saving three match points at 5-2 down in the fifth set which he won 8-6, while fellow teenager, 18-year-old Borna Coric of Croatia, edged Spanish 18th seed Tommy Robredo, also in five sets.
Coric next faces Jack Sock in round three, one of only two surviving Americans in the men’s singles.
After letting another big lead slip with an error-strewn performance at the French Open on Wednesday, top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka felt like getting as far away from the courts as possible. “Just want to quit tennis right now,” Sabalenka said after wasting a lead of a set and two breaks in a 3-6, 7-5, 6-0 loss to Diana Shnaider in the women’s singles quarter-finals. “We’ll see in few days. Hopefully I’ll get back on track mentally.” Sabalenka’s wait for a first French Open title continues despite the four-time major winner leading 4-1 in the second set and being two points from victory while
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