World No. 1 Serena Williams overcame a stiff challenge from local hope Kristina Mladenovic to advance to the fourth round of the women’s singles category at the Roland Garros on Saturday.
The top-seeded Williams was stretched to the wire by her French adversary but managed to stay in the fray after prevailing in an intense two-set battle, winning 6-4 7-6 on court Philippe-Chatrier.
It turned out to be an eventful encounter with Williams’ brute power and Mladenovic’s drop-shot dominated guile going neck to neck. While the former looked to wipe out everything that came her way, the latter mixed her shots really well to give her fancied opponent a run for her money.
Both the players consolidated their serves to lock the first set to 5-4 before Williams drew the first blood by breaking Mladenovic to take the first set 6-4 in 54 minutes.
The story, somewhat, remained the same in the second set. Williams squandered a 40-0 lead on Mladenovic’s serve on two occasions, as the duo held on to their service games to take it to the tie-breaker.
The rain interrupted with the match tied up at 6-6 in the second set. But, it did little to shrink the competitiveness between the two as Williams reeled off two consecutive points at 10-10 to seal the tie-breaker, and the match.
Moving on, she’s scheduled to cross the swords with 18th seed Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, who upset 14th-seeded Ana Ivanovic 6-4 6-4 in the other third-round encounter.
