Champ Ostapenko dumped in 1st round

Jelena Ostapenko became only the sixth female Grand Slam champion to lose in the opening round of their title defense on Sunday when she lost to Kateryna Kozlova at the French Open.

The world No. 5 never looked at ease on the Roland Garros main show court, slumping to a 7-5, 6-3 defeat to a Ukrainian opponent who had won both the pair’s previous meetings.

Not since Anastasia Myskina lost in the opening round of the 2005 tournament has the French Open lost its women’s champion so early.

By losing, Ostapenko joins an ignominious group including, as well as Myskina, Steffi Graf, Jennifer Capriati, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Angelique Kerber who all lost as Grand Slam champions on the first run of their defenses.

Kozlova, competing with a large, weeping blister on her heel which caused her to take a medical break at the end of the first set, was well worth the victory, playing with power and composure, in contrast to the flustered champion.

In other action, Venus Williams was stunned by unseeded Wang Qiang on the first day of the French Open in a rematch of their first-round meeting last year.

The ninth-seeded Williams has struggled on clay this season and that continued in a 6-4, 7-5 loss on Sunday. For Wang, it’s just her second victory over a top-10 player in her career.

Williams had a whopping 35 unforced errors in the hard-fought match that lasted an hour and 40 minutes.

Williams, 37, reached the quarterfinals and semifinals at the Miami and Indian Wells events earlier this season, but won just one match in clay-court events in Madrid and Rome heading into Roland Garros.

Williams has long struggled at the French Open, though she was a runner-up in 2002 and reached the quarterfinals on four other occasions, though she hasn’t made it far since 2006.

While her singles run is over, Venus and Serena Williams are still slotted to compete in doubles as a wild-card entrant.

Serena Williams, unseeded since watching her ranking plummet after taking time off for her pregnancy, is slated to open singles play on Monday.

Men’s world No. 1 and 10-time champion Rafael Nadal begins his French Open title defense on Monday with a clash against Italy’s Simone Bolelli on Court Philippe-Chatrier.

On TV: French Open first-round action (live on Eurosport from noon)