Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova survived an enormous scare in opposition to Belgian qualifier Greet Minnen in her opening spherical of the French Open, having to save a matchpoint en route to a 6-7(3) 7-6(5) 6-1 win on Sunday.
Kvitova, who reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros in 2012 and final 12 months, struggled together with her serve from the beginning and suffered service breaks in her first two video games.
The eleventh seed fought again valiantly to take the opening set to a tie-breaker underneath barely windy circumstances on the Suzanne Lenglen courtroom solely to lose it by serving three double faults.
The Czech was down 30-40 at 6-5 within the second set and gazing a first-round exit at Roland Garros for the primary time since 2010 however saved the matchpoint with a crosscourt backhand winner after which levelled issues within the tiebreaker.
Her confidence soared within the decider and she or he jumped to a 5-0 lead very quickly, dropping simply three factors on serve within the third set.
“I might say that from my aspect it wasn’t actually good from the start,” the former world number two said. “I was struggling, I was missing a lot, I was double faulting a lot.
“I didn’t really feel myself that well. I was pretty tight. And, yeah, it was really tough. I mean, I was fighting not only with her but with myself as well.
“I’m glad that in the end I beat myself as well and beat her, so that counts.”
World quantity 125 Minnen had misplaced each her earlier conferences with Kvitova in straight units. She regarded the stronger participant for many of the match however her resistance pale as soon as Kvitova reined in her errors and located her vary together with her crushing forehands.
“I used to be simply hoping that some level would simply flip the match… I used to be simply taking part in level by level,” mentioned Kvitova, who had 44 unforced errors.
“I started to serve a little bit better in the second set, and that was pretty important.”
Kvitova will subsequent meet Russian Elena Vesnina, who strolled previous Belarusian Olga Govortsova 6-1 6-0.
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