Samantha Stosur said she was playing some of the best claycourt tennis of her career after beating last year’s runner-up Lucie Safarova 6-3 6-7 (0) 7-5 on Friday to reach the fourth round of the French Open.
The 32-year-old former US Open champion reached two semi-finals and a final at Roland Garros between 2009-12 but has not made it beyond the fourth round of a grand slam since.
Australian Stosur will have to defeat Romania’s Simona Halep to extend her stay in Paris but was buoyant after recovering from a drubbing in the second-set tiebreak against 11th seed Safarova to claim a notable victory on Court Philippe Chatrier.
“I was like, jeez, I can’t remember being so happy to win in the third round,” she told reporters, “It means a lot.”
Halep, the runner-up to Maria Sharapova in 2014, needed three sets to see off 18-year-old Japanese player Naomi Osaka 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.
Stosur crunched down 14 aces in a high-quality contest and broke in the last game of the match to claim only a fourth victory in 15 attempts against the Czech left-hander who defeated her in the Prague final on clay last month.
Asked if she was playing as well as when she beat Serena Williams on the way to the 2010 final where she lost to Italian Francesca Schiavone, Stosur said: “Yeah, I think that’s just as good as those matches.
“I feel like today was a really good step up again in level. That’s probably as good as I have played here for many years.”
Stosur must maintain that level against Halep, however, if she is to avenge a 6-2 6-0 hammering in the Madrid semi-finals this year.
“I’m not going to think too much about that, why I fell apart, I’m not going to lose too much sleep over that match,” she added.

Kvitova out
Polish second seed Agnieszka Radwanska reached the last 16 with a 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-2 win over Barbora Strycova of the Czech Republic and now tackles Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria.
Spanish fourth seed and last year’s Wimbledon runner-up Garbine Muguruza won the last nine games to knock out Belgium’s Yanina Wickmayer 6-3, 6-0.
Muguruza, a quarter-finalist in the last two years, next faces 2009 champion Svetlana Kuznetsova who beat Russian Fed Cup teammate Anastasia Pavlychenkova 6-1, 6-4.
But Czech 10th seed Petra Kvitova became the fourth top 10 seed to exit by the third round after she lost 6-0, 6-7 (3), 6-0 to American world number 108 Shelby Rogers.
Kvitova, a semi-finalist in 2012, committed 36 unforced errors as 23-year-old Rogers reached the last 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time.
Rogers, who had put out Czech 17th seed Karolina Pliskova in the first round, next plays Romanian 25th seed Irina-Camelia Begu.
With Halep also through, it’s the first time since 1997 that two Romanian women have made the last-16.