Kvitova, who reached the semifinals at Roland Garros in 2012, looked more comfortable than in her first-round match.
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Defending champion Stan Wawrinka managed to avoid an ignominious first-round exit at the French Open Tennis yesterday. The second-seeded Murray acknowledged he can’t keep getting pushed to the limit if he has designs on adding a third Grand Slam title to his collection.
I don’t think there is a ton of value in this game and the game total has not been set yet.
“The most important is to win, even more in three sets”, Wawrinka said.
The biggest surprise of the evening was Andy Murray’s struggle against Czech doubles specialist Radek Stepanek.
Connors was 38 years and 280 days old when he fell in the French Open third round in 1991.
“I couldn’t believe it myself”, Bourgue said. But today I’m really happy with the way I find solution. I was very proud. I brought, you know, iPad and cards and everything.
Not surprisingly, it didn’t last.
Groth, an Australian ranked 100 who has yet to make the second round of the French in two visits, lacked the variety of shots and power to derail Nadal’s pursuit of a 15th major title. “Hopefully I will play better and better to go as far as possible”. Not much else to go on.
The third seed won 7-6(7) 6-3 6-4 on a sunny Court Suzanne Lenglen, although it was by no means straightforward against a skilful opponent ranked 93rd in the world.
Murray, second favourite to de-throne Wawrinka after world number one Novak Djokovic, had to wait until 7pm local time to take on tricky Stepanek, the oldest man in the draw.
Karlovic next plays Murray.
“Physically, the average rally length will only be a few shots – maybe three, four shots max”.
Andy Murray says his sometimes fiery on-court behavior wasn’t the cause of his split from coach Amelie Mauresmo. I just kept my focusing on what I have to do when I go on court. “But you can’t continue playing matches like that and then expect to win the tournament”.
Fifth-seeded Kei Nishikori advanced to the second round at the French Open by beating Andrey Kuznetsov 6-3, 6-3, 6-3.
Bidding to complete a career Grand Slam in Paris after losing in the final three times over the past four years, Djokovic defeated 95th-ranked Yen-hsun Lu of Taiwan 6-4, 6-1, 6-1 on Tuesday.
Raonic did not face a single break point and made only 17 unforced errors.
Bourgue’s level eventually dropped, but Murray deserves credit for limiting his own mistakes down the stretch.
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Wawrinka did well to dig deep from two sets to one down, but he will need to come out of the blocks quickly against Daniel.
