Paris: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia beat Francesca Schiavone 1-6, 6-4, 6-1 and Klara Zakopalova of Czech Republic won 7-6 (4), 6-2 against wild-card entry Caroline Garcia in the first round of the Open GDF Suez on Monday.
Pavlyuchenkova struggled at times with her serve against Schiavone , making six double-faults, but she also hit four aces and broke the Italian veteran five times. She next faces either seventh-seeded Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain or qualifier Johanna Larsson of Sweden in the second round. They play their match on Tuesday.
Daniela Hantuchova will face top seed Maria Sharapova in the second round after beating Marina Erakovic on Tuesday. Hantuchova was leading 6-3, 3-0, and looked set for a straight-sets victory before Erakovic retired without citing a specified reason. Sharapova leads Hantuchova 8-1 in their head-to-heads, with the Slovak's only win against the four-time Grand Slam champion who has won every major when they first played 10 years ago.
In other first round matches, there were wins for Frenchwoman Alize Cornet and Yvonne Meusburger of Austria. Cornet labored past Magdalena Rybarikova of Serbia 6-3, 5-7, 6-2 and Meusburger beat Anna-Lena Friedsam of Germany 7-5, 6-1. Cornet closed out the first set on serve after breaking Rybarikova twice.
The Serb struggled on her serve in the second set but Cornet missed chances to break her midway through the set and then twice dropped her own serve. At 6-5 and 30-40 on Cornet's serve, Rybarikova broke Cornet again to level the match. But then Cornet broke her twice at the start of the third set to open up a 3-0 lead and regain control.####and Cornet
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