Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza struggled on Court Suzanne Lenglen, coming back from a set down to defeat Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 3-6, 6-3, 6-3, in the first round of the French Open yesterday.
Muguruza, who has made the quarter-finals for the last two years, will take on French wildcard Myrtille Georges, the world number 203, for a place in the last 32.
But the 22-year-old Wimbledon runner-up was far from impressive.
After dropping the first set, Muguruza had to save nine break points just in the opening game of the second.
She then allowed her 37th-ranked opponent, who has won just one match all year, to claw her way back from 0-4 down to 3-4 in the decider before the Spaniard settled herself to see out the win.
Muguruza fired 44 winners but hit 53 unforced errors and had to save 17 of 21 break points.
“I think I had the music on or something. I didn’t really listen and the supervisor came, and they’re like, ‘We’re waiting for you’. I’m like, ‘No way’. I start to do running and jumping fast. So I didn’t have the time to really warm up,” she said.
Second seed Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland brushed aside Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski 6-0, 6-2.
Radwanska, who was a quarter-finalist in 2013 but lost in the first round to Germany’s Annika Beck last year, goes on to face Caroline Garcia of France.
Garcia won the Strasbourg claycourt title on Saturday.
Yesterday’s result left Jovanovski, the world number 120, without a win in 2016.
Romanian sixth seed Simona Halep, the 2014 runner-up, also progressed, taking just 43 minutes to defeat Japan’s Nao Hibino 6-2, 6-0.
Seeds falling by the wayside included 2012 runner-up Sara Errani, the Italian 16th seed, who lost to 2010 Wimbledon semi-finalist Tsvetana Pironkova 6-3, 6-2.
Also heading out was Czech 17th seed Karolina Pliskova who lost 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 to 108th-ranked Shelby Rogers of the United States.
Play started two and a half hours late yesterday because of more rain with 12 of the 66 scheduled matches pushed back to today.
However, there was time for a notable first. Qualifier Cagla Buyukakcay beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 5-7, 7-6 (7/2), 6-2 to become the first Turkish woman in the Open era to reach the second round of a Grand Slam.