Defending women’s champion Serena Williams played wretched tennis in her second round match against Garbine Muguruza on Wednesday to crash out of French Open. Serena’s defeat implies that in just four days play at the Grand Slam tournament in Paris, the top two women’s seeds are out of the fray in 2014. On Tuesday, it was Li Na, who lost in her first round match against Frenchwoman Kristina Mladenovic. Other seeded players, who lost on Wednesday included; no.12 seed Italian Flavia Pennetta, no.20 seed Alize Cornet, no.29 Venus Williams, men’s no.15 Mikhail Youzhny of Russia and no. 20 Alexander Dolopolov of Ukraine .
Italy’s no. 12 seed Flavia Pennetta lost to Sweden’s Johanna Larsson in a tough three-setter. Pennetta won the first set 7-5 but Larsson played brilliant tennis in the next two sets to take the match 5-7, 6-4, 6-2. Another casuality was Germany’s Sabine Lisicki, runner-up at Wimbledon last year and seeded 16th at Roland Garros. Lisicki injured her wrist in the second set against compatriot Mona Barthel.
For the no. 1 player of France, Alize Cornet, the three-set loss against world no. 205 Taylor Townsend was totally unexpected. The little-know American played great tennis and matched her more famous counterpart, who had the entire Roland Garros crowd with her. In one of the best matches in the tournament so far, Townsend beat Cornet 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 to set up the third round clash with Spain’s 14th seed Carla Suarez Navarro, who managed to scrape though in her third-round match against Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland with a score-line of 7-5, 1-6, 6-4.
Men’s 20th seeded player Alexander Dolopolov of Ukraine allowed a 2-set lead to slip in losing to Spain’s Marcel Granollers 1-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-0, 6-2. The flashy Dolgopolov later said that he had suffered an injury, which resulted in the downturn for him. In men’s second round matches the biggest upset was caused by the Czech Republic’s Radek Stepanek, who ousted Russia’s 15th seeded player Mikhail Youzhny 6-0, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.
Women’s no. 7 seed Maria Sharapova also survived a first-set scare in her second round encounter with Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria, before coming through 7-5, 6-2. The world no. 42 Bulgarian led 4-2 in the first set as Sharapova looked tense. But the former world no. 1, dug deep into her reserves to level the score 4-4, before taking the first set 7-5. In the latter stages of the first set, Pironkova kept clutching her hip at most times and finally called her physio for treatment. It was Sharapova’s game all the way after that.
The spectators at Roland Garros were pleased to see two of their countrymen easing into the third round. 13th seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga was comfortable in his 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 victory against Jurgen Melzer of Austria. The Frenchman is making his seventh appearance in Roland Garros and his next opponent is Poland’s Jerzy Janowicz, seeded the no.22 here. In his second round match, Janowicz defeated Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen, 7-6, 7-6, 6-4. Another Frenchman who entered the third round on Wednesday was the 29th seed Gilles Simon, who defeated Colombia’s Alejandro Gonzalez 6-4, 6-0, 6-2. But Gilles has a tough third round opponent in Canadian Milos Raonic. Federer, Djokovic, Berdych, Gulbis, Robredo, Cibulkova, Kerber, Cilic and some other seeded players moved into the third round on Wednesday.