In the women’s category, Tuesday’s French Open brought the appearance of three great names: Garbine Muguruza, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams. All three remained victorious.
By Jens Huiber from Paris
The starting positions in Roland Garros are not open to every player, especially not to the visitor. Exhibit A: Tuesday’s schedule. Garbine Muguruza, winner in Paris 2016, current Wimbledon champion and thus number three of the WTA charts, was allowed to make the prelude. But on Court 1, the arena that will be demolished again after this year.
Muguruza has endured her fate with composure, perhaps her love for the place where she won her first major title has also cooled off since last year: At that time, the Spaniard was facing an audience in Suzanne Lenglen that supported local hero Kristina Mladenovic to the best of her ability. Depending on who was asked for it: still a permitted frame or not. Muguruza was the opinion leader of the no-rule faction.
But Muguruza was up to the task of Svetlana Kuznetsova, after a short first set the second set was much smoother.
The exact opposite could be said of Maria Sharapova: Opponent Richel Hogenkamp lacked all means in the first run to become dangerous to the double winner at the Bois de Boulogne. On the Suzanne Lenglen, by the way, the second largest stadium of the complex.
Sharapova kindly brought the Dutch woman back into the match, but after just under two hours and three sets she still had the better end in her favour.
That’s where Serena Williams had just started her first appearance at a Grand Slam tournament since winning the Australian Open in 2017. Serena has 23 major titles on the credit side, anything but the biggest stadium would be an affront to the American. Of course: For Garbi Muguruza, too, but well, it was still Simona Halep, the number one in the world, who had to be supplied.
The audience warmly welcomed Serena, but the chatrier needed a break after Rafael Nadal’s third set tiebreak win, but was half full at best. Who was live at the start, got to see a return, which beat the balls from the standing again mercilessly over the net. Especially at the beginning the game from the movement was not to evaluate, Kristyna Pliskova kept the rallies short.
It was to be expected that Serena would not come to the French Open in athletic top form. But how she fought her way to victory towards the end of both sets is still underlined by her great class. And this is a characteristic that she has in common with Muguruza, but above all with Maria Sharapova.