TENNIS FRENCH OPEN – Lucie Safarova defeated 11th seed Ana Ivanovic in the third round of the Roland Garros 6-3 6-3 in 86 minutes. The two have met 7 times now with Ivanovic winning the first two and Safarova taking the last five matches. Cordell Hackshaw
Interviews, Results, OOP, Draws from the Roland Garros
As the women’s draw exploded this week, dispersing the top seeds out of the tournament, Ana Ivanovic (11) must have favoured her chances of winning another French Open title as she did in 2008. “[M]y clay court season was really good. I was very happy about that” the Serbian stated. However, there was one seeded player that Ivanovic was hoping to have been dismissed before the 3rd round but remained; Lucie Safarova (23). “[E]veryone was talking about seeds coming out, but not in my part. I had really tough opponent today. I lost to her a lot of times before” Ivanovic added. The two have met 6 times with Ivanovic winning the first two and Safarova taking the last four matches. Safarova would now extend this to a 5th win a row as she dispatched Ivanovic 6-3 6-3 in 86 minutes. “I’m excited, really happy, because it’s been a long time that I reached fourth round here at the French Open.” Safarova exclaimed after the match.
Both players started off well with Ivanovic saving break points early. At 3-3, Safarova decided that it was time to take her chances. She broke the Serbian to quickly go up 5-3 after holding serve. Ivanovic then relinquished her serve again and therefore lost the set 3-6. Safarova remained very focused on the court. The Czech was serving well and not rushing shots to make unnecessary errors. She broke early in the 2nd set to be up 3-1. Ivanovic realized that the match was getting away from her and so broke back to be on serve. However, her serving was a liability on this day getting only 53% of her first serves in and winning only 50% of those points. Safarova was able to break her again and force her to serve to stay in the match at 2-5. The pressure seemed to have been too much for Ivanovic as she double faulted to give Safarova match point. Ivanovic quickly got her head back into the game and held for 3-5. Safarova had no problem serving for the match and did so when Ivanovic’s forehand went wide. Safarova won and will face Svetlana Kuznetsova (27) for a place in the quarterfinals.
Ivanovic had this to say about her match’s performance, “I think overall my level wasn’t there today. You know, I really struggled to find my rhythm. And she was playing very aggressive. She wasn’t…giving many free points. I really struggled to come in and to be aggressive and to finish off the points.” Safarova assessed her own performance saying, “I think I was playing very solid today, and I was not making a lot of mistakes.I was pressuring Ana into her backhand side and then attacking the forehand side, which was working well. I was serving decent.” She was serving very decent winning 67% of her 1st serves with 20 winners and 18 errors compared to Ivanovic’s 30 errors to 17 winners. It should be an interesting matchup between Kuznetsova and Safarova as both ladies are looking to put themselves into the top 20.
