No.4 seed Elena Rybakina started slowly and needed two goes to seal the win. In between, she was near-untouchable as she defeated Greet Minnen 6-2, 6-3 on Tuesday in the first round of Roland Garros.
The former Wimbledon champion was playing her first match in over three weeks, since her Madrid semifinal loss to Aryna Sabalenka, after illness forced her to withdraw from Rome. There was a trace of rust at the start of the match, which she began with eight straight unforced errors, including a double fault to drop serve in the opening game. At the end, she squandered her first match point at 5-1 with a netted drop shot attempt, and needed a second chance to serve out victory.
But for the majority of the match, Rybakina was in dazzling form. From 2-0 down, she rattled off 10 successive games, raining winners down on Minnen from all parts of the court. The Kazakhstani’s forehand was the bedrock of her run, but she also deployed successful drop shots repeatedly and was quick to swarm the net when opportunity presented itself.
In total, she fired 36 winners to 21 unforced errors, and won 14 out of 21 points at net. In the second round, Rybakina will face either former World No.1 Angelique Kerber or Hamburg champion Arantxa Rus.
More to come…