TENNIS ROLAND GARROS – Dominika Cibulkova comes into the 2014 French Open having not won a single match during this year’s European clay court season. Her opponent in round 1 was France’s Virginie Razzano who is infamously known as the only player to knock Serena Williams out of the 1st round of a major. The French crowd was perhaps hoping for another such upset. That was not to be. Cordell Hackshaw
Interviews, Results, OOP, Draws from the Roland Garros
Dominika Cibulkova comes into the 2014 French Open having not won a single match during this year’s European clay court season. She was sent packing at both the Madrid and Roma events in the first round. This lack of clay court confidence was very apparent during the start of her match against France’s Virginie Razzano who is infamously known as the only player to knock Serena Williams out of the 1st round of a major. She did so in spectacular fashion in Paris in 2012. The French crowd was perhaps hoping for another such upset. That was not to be for despite the slow start, the 9th seeded Slovakian dispatched the unseeded Frenchwoman 7-5 6-0.
Razzano was making a good account for herself in the early part of the 1st set. She held serve and was making life difficult for Cibulkova on her serve. Her efforts soon paid off in the 7th game as she broke Cibulkova and served to go up 5-3. However, the Frenchwoman could not consolidate the break and matters were even at 4-4. Razzano was not to be denied the opportunity to serve for the set as she broke again for 5-4. Perhaps sensing danger and the potential for an upset, Cibulkova finally got her head into the game. She reeled off the next three games, breaking Razzano twice in the process to take the 1st set 7-5.
That inability to close out the 1st set may have affected the Frenchwoman because she would not win another game in the match. In the 2nd set, it was all Cibulkova. She was winning 75% of the points on both her first and second serves. She never faced a break point and had 7 winners to 6 errors. Razzano on the other hand won 44% of the points on her 1st serve and a dismal 11% on her 2nd serve. She only produced 2 winners to a whopping 15 errors. The crowd could only mildly applaud as they watch the diminutive Slovakian break down the weaker game of Razzano. In her press conference, Cibulkova described the match; “I knew she’s playing a lot of down lines, she’s serving a lot, she’s serving well… [A]t 5 4 on her serve …I changed a little bit something on my return. I went a little bit forward. I didn’t give her any time. So there was a change that really pumped me up, you know, and then I won a few games and I started to get more confidence.” Confidence indeed as she won nine straight games. Cibulkova will play Tamira Paszek in the 2nd round. A possible 3rd round encounter with 2010 French Open finalist Sam Stosur looms in the future for her. Stosur beat Cibulkova 6-4 6-0 recently in Madrid.
