Wawrinka, Nishikori shown the door
Erakovic needs to beat Kvitova
Third-seeded Australian Open champion Stan Wawrinka made a shock, listless exit from the French Open yesterday at the hands of Spanish journeyman Guillermo Garcia-Lopez.
The Swiss, bidding to become the first man since Jim Courier in 1992 to win the French Open in the same year as the Australian title, lost 6-4 5-7 6-2 6-0.
The 29-year-old produced a woeful 61 unforced errors as GarciaLopez, the world No 41, booked a second round match against Frenchman Adrian Mannarino.
‘‘It was just terrible,’’ Wawrinka said. ‘‘It was not a good match. I need to take a few days off and see what will happen. Sometimes you need a tough loss to see where you are going.’’
Wawrinka admitted that the pressure of being a grand slam champion is weighing heavily on him.
‘‘I need to find the pieces, how to be happy, how to win matches.’’
Wawrinka, a quarterfinalist at Roland Garros in 2013 and tipped as a possible title contender after winning the Monte Carlo Masters crown last month, was the second top 10 seed to lose.
Japanese ninth seed Kei Nishikori had earlier lost 7-6 (7-4) 6-1 6-2 to Slovakia’s Martin Klizan.
There were no such problems for Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Maria Sharapova who all shrugged off the Paris gloom.
Eight-time champion Nadal, bidding to become the first man to win five Roland Garros titles in a row, beat US wildcard and world No 279 Robby Ginepri 6-0 6-3 6-0.
It was Nadal’s 60th win at the French Open against just one loss.
World No 1 Nadal kicked off his campaign on the secondary Suzanne Lenglen court, while title rivals Djokovic and Wawrinka were handed top billing on the main Philippe Chatrier arena.
But it was still business as usual for Nadal who fired 27 winners past Ginepri, a semi-finalist at the 2005 US Open whose challenge was undone by 41 unforced errors.
‘‘It doesn’t matter where I play,’’ said Nadal, who next faces highlyrated Dominic Thiem of Austria.
‘‘It’s always a pleasure and an honour to play at Roland Garros, on Chatrier, Lenglen or any other court. This place has given me unforgettable emotions.’’
Second seed Djokovic, the 2012 runner-up who is seeking a first Roland Garros title to complete a career Grand Slam, brushed aside Portugal’s Joao Sousa, the world 42, in straight sets, 6-1 6-2 6-4.
Djokovic, widely regarded as the favourite to dethrone Nadal having beaten the Spaniard in Rome two weeks ago, next faces French hope Jeremy Chardy.
Sharapova, seeded seven and the 2012 champion, needed just over an hour to beat fellow Russian, Ksenia Pervak, the world’s 156th-ranked player, 6-1 6-2.
The 27-year-old will next face Bulgaria’s 2010 Wimbledon semifinalist Tsvetana Pironkova.
Nishikori, 24, and coached by 1989 champion Michael Chang, was the first Japanese man in 75 years to make the fourth round in Paris in 2013.
But the world No 10 was still bothered by the back injury he suffered in the Madrid Masters final against Nadal and was broken 10 times by Klizan. He also hit 10 double faults and committed 40 unforced errors
Left-handed Klizan, 24, one of six former junior champions in the main draw, goes on to face Robin Haase of the Netherlands.
‘‘It sucks,’’ Nishikori said.
Other top men’s players going through were Italian 14th seed Fabio Fognini, Spain’s Tommy Robredo and Latvian Ernests Gulbis.
In the women’s first round, Czech fifth seed Petra Kvitova, a semifinalist in 2012 defeated Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan 7-5 6-2 while Dominika Cibulkova, the Slovak ninth seed, beat France’s Virginie Razzano 7-5 6-0. Australian 18th seed Samantha Stosur, the runner-up in 2010, eased past Puerto Rico’s Monica Puig 6-1 6-1 despite having had five stitches in a gashed leg. It was all too easy for Marina Erakovic in the first round of Roland Garros, but she has plenty at stake when she next takes on the fifth seed Petra Kvitova.
The match against the Czech, who won Wimbledon in 2011, will be a much bigger challenge for Erakovic than Nadiya Kichenok from Ukraine proved to be.
The New Zealander was able to brush past her opponent in just 59 minutes in the early hours of yesterday morning, winning 6-2 6-1.
Erakovic, like many of the high-ranking women players, can be erratic but, even for her, this was an expected comfortable win against an opponent who hasn’t beaten someone inside the top 100 all year.
However, Kvitova will be a different proposition and it’s a match Erakovic really needs to win.
She made it to the third round in Paris last year, which means she’s defending 130 ranking points.
She’s picked up 70 for making it into the second round, but will lose 60 if she can’t defeat Kvitova and that will drop her around 10 places from her current ranking of 61.
That may not seem hugely significant, but it’s around that ranking position where a player is borderline towards getting into the main draw of the big tournaments outside the grand slams.
Having that cushion of not needing to battle through three rounds of qualifying matches each week is something Erakovic certainly doesn’t want to give up without a fight.
But her record this year has been average and she recently dropped down to playing second-tier ITF tournaments to regain confidence.
She returned to WTA events the week before the French Open, playing in Nuremburg, and was easily dismissed by world No 9, Angelique Kerber 6-4 6-2.
While the signs don’t point to an Erakovic win, she’s not without a chance.
When on song, she has one of the best attacking forehands in the women’s game and also possesses a powerful first serve.
Despite Kvitova’s highranking, she is prone to spectacularly bad losses.
At the Australian Open this year, she went out to world No 88 Luksika Kumkhum from Thailand, while in Stuttgart last month she lost to the 102-ranked Alisa Kleybanova.
So it will take Kvitova having an off day again and Erakovic playing to her potential for the Kiwi to win, but where there’s a chance there’s hope.