Former finalist Simona Halep has survived a first-set wobble to reach the third round of the French Open for only the second time in her career with a straight-sets win over Kazakhstan's Zarina Diyas.
The Romanian sixth seed surrendered her serve twice in the opening four games on Wednesday to trail 4-1 but called on her experience to subdue her 90th-ranked opponent 7-6 (7-5) 6-2.
More breaks followed in the second set before Halep finally found her groove to take a 5-2 lead and set up three match points on Diyas' serve.
The first one went begging but Halep's gritty baseline play paid off on the next point as Diyas bowed out after flicking a forehand long to end a 10-shot rally.
"The first set was very tough and I was very nervous as I seemed to be fighting for every point," Halep said in a courtside interview.
The good news for Halep is that the only previous time she reached the last 32, she made it all the way to the 2014 Roland Garros final.
Halep and her bizarre black and white zebra print dress will be back on court on Friday when she takes on Japan's Naomi Osaka for a place in the fourth round.
Osaka accounted for Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia 6-3 6-3.
In other women's second-round action, Russian 13th seed Svetlana Kuznetsova beat Heather Watson of 6-1 6-3, while 10th-ranked Czech Petra Kvitova downed Taiwan's Hsieh Su-Wei 6-4 6-1.
The 24th-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia defeated Turkey's Cagla Buyukakcay 6-3 4-6 6-1 and American Shelby Rogers was a 6-4 6-2 winner over Elena Vesnina of Russia
Share
