World no.2 Kim Clijsters made her exit at Roland Garros in the second round when she fell at the hands of 20 year old Arantxa Rus. Rus played with more confidence as the match progressed while an out of sorts Clijsters gave away costly free points. Kim found herself down two service breaks in the deciding set, having made a double fault to practically hand Rus the lead. It was evident that the match-point that came and left during the second set had come back to haunt her as well as the many unforced errors she made during the match. Rus’s strengths surfaced during moments when it mattered and she kept the ball in play, in the end caused the biggest upset of the tournament so far. She said Kim was one of her favourite players and that she couldn’t believe it at first that she had beaten her. Kim’s last appearance at Roland Garros was in 2006, she missed the tournament last year due to injury and of course during 2007-2009 she had retired from the game. She reached the finals twice in 2001 and 2003 and even when she came into this year’s tournament with less matches under her belt and arguably not being 100% fit physically, many expected that her experience would just about pull her through. Victoria Azarenka and Maria Sharapova are also very popular women said to be favourites to winning this year’s title. Maria Sharapova has worked as hard as her fans expected her to and has been rewarded with her biggest win on clay at Rome, which certainly gave her confidence a boost coming into the tournament. She won her first round match in straight sets 6-2 6-0 against twenty-nine year old Mirjana Lučić. The absence of Venus and Serena and Justine Henin of Belguim, who retired, now for the second time in her tennis career, makes for an interesting Roland Garros this year…an almost wide-open Roland Garros. World number 3 Vera Zvonareva saved a match-point against Sabine Lisicki and ultimately won that match 4-6 7-5 7-5 while Maria Sharapova was down a set and two service breaks down in the second and fought back to defeat Caroline Garcia of France 3-6 6-4 6-0.
