Stan Wawrinka avoided becoming the first defending champion to lose first round at the French Open yesterday when he battled past combative Lukas Rosol in five tough sets
Stanislas Wawrinka reacts after winning his first round match against Lukas Rosol at the French Open in Paris yesterday
Paris: Stan Wawrinka avoided becoming the first defending champion to lose first round at the French Open yesterday when he battled past combative Lukas Rosol in five tough sets.
Stanislas Wawrinka reacts after winning his first round match against Lukas Rosol at the French Open in Paris yesterday. Pic/AFP
Third seed Wawrinka fired 56 winners but committed 46 unforced errors and saved eight break points to book a second round clash against Japan's Taro Daniel.
Familiar opponent
Wawrinka, 31, had defeated 59th-ranked Rosol in the semi-finals of the Geneva clay-court tournament just last Friday. 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 Monday but once he had let slip two break points at 2-2 in the fourth set, his hopes slowly slipped away.
Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza was also struggling 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 has made the quarter-finals for the last two years, will take on French wildcard Myrtille Georges, the World No 203, for a place in the last 32.
Muguruza fired 44 winners but hit 53 unforced errors and had to save 17 of 21 break points. Play started two and a half hours late yesterday because of more rain with 12 of the 66 scheduled matches pushed back to Tuesday.
Canadian eighth seed Milos Raonic, a 2014 quarter-finalist, defeated Serbia's Janko Tipsarevic 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (7/5). Tipsarevic, ranked at 686, was playing his first Roland Garros since 2013 after being treated for a benign tumour on his left foot.
Japanese fifth seed Kei Nishikori beat Italy's Simone Bolelli 6-1, 7-5, 6-3 on Sunday. Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova, won her resumed match against Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan 4-6, 6-1, 6-4.
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