The tenth seed from Croatia lost 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-4, 6-2 Monday in the first round to Marco Trungelliti, a 26-year-old Argentinian who made the French Open main draw through its qualifying tournament.
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Wawrinka has won all four previous matchups against Rosol, including last week on clay en route to taking the title in Geneva.
But Rosol would not go down easy, matching everything Wawrinka had to offer and then some.
But after trailing 2-1 in sets, Wawrinka took the last two to win what shaped up beforehand as a mismatch in his favor.
“He’s typically very aggressive and puts a lot of pressure”.
“I should have played better to close out the match when I had the opportunities”, Raonic said. “But after that, I was here to beat Rosol today”.
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 wasn’t easy. I started really well”. Pretty aggressive and moving the ball pretty good.
“It’s a good thing to get through, but it’s never the best to start with a five-set match and not play your best”.
In the women’s draw, fourth-seeded Garbine Muguruza of Spain rebounded from losing the first against Anna Karolina Schmiedlova to beat the Slovakian 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
“Thankfully that’s still the case”, Wawrinka, who stunned world number one Novak Djokovic in last year’s final, told reporters.
“When you go through two days like this, you realize the importance of having a roof over your courts”, said the 51-year-old former captain of France’s Davis Cup team, Xinhua reports.
A fraught Murray dropped serve with a double-fault and conceded the opening set with a misfired forehand. In all, Wawrinka made 46 unforced errors, 17 on the backhand side. I was up 6-1, 3-0, I think. I’m like, “No way”. I start to do running and jumping fast.
“I know that physically I’m stronger than he is, and I knew that he was going to decline a little bit”, said the No. 3-seeded Wawrinka said.
The top-seeded woman on the day, No. 2 Agnieszka Radwanska, had no trouble besting Bojana Jovanovski, 6-0, 6-2, and cruised into the second round without issue.
Radwanska was a quarter-finalist in 2013 but lost in the first round to Germany’s Annika Beck past year.
Garcia won the Strasbourg claycourt title on Saturday.
Romanian sixth seed Simona Halep, the 2014 runner-up, reached the second round in just 43 minutes.
After just 10 of 32 matches were completed in a little over four hours of play on Sunday, the second day of the tournament was hit by another 2-hour delay. Yet Stepanek will return on Tuesday believing he can become the oldest man to win a round at Roland Garros since Jimmy Connors (aged 38) in 1991.
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Roland Garros has fallen well behind the other grand slam tournaments in terms of facilities for players and spectators but the French Tennis Federation has been frustrated in its efforts to improve the venue.
