The full field of top 32 players of Roland Garros 2023 got emerged after today's matches of second round in top half of the draw.
Strong day for contenders, game over for the French
Four of the main contenders to play for the biggest stakes in this tournament have appeared on the court today and moved onto next round in a confident style. Iga Swiatek has replicated the score from her opening match by eliminating Claire Liu 6-4 6-0. This time, the Pole has started strongly, by gaining double break advantage in first 3 games, but the unseeded has surprisingly managed to level the score. Swiatek regrouped since then and clinched the opening set with one break advantage. The world's ranking leader clicked the higher gear in second set and added another bagel to her collection, ending up the match after 90 minutes of play. Still not the A level of Swiatek, but well enough to move past two opening matches without any serious trouble. Xiyu Wang is the next stop for the title holder. The Chinese has defeated Marie Bouzkova and Rebecca Peterson in two opening rounds, both in straight sets.
Elena Rybakina showed a good performance against Linda Noskova. The Kazakh won 6-3 6-3 without losing any single service game and scored an impressive amount of 30 winners with a positive ratio in compare to 26 unforced errors. Rybakina will play against Sara Sorribes Tormo in the next round. The Spaniard has approached the third round without losing a set so far with a victories over Clara Burel and Petra Martic.
Cori Gauff won 6-2 6-3 against Julia Grabher. The finalist of last week's WTA 250 tournament in Rabat did not help herself to take up any serious fight against the American, as she lost 6 service games in a row since the middle of first set and commited 27 unforced errors with scoring just 9 winners at the time. Gauff did not shine with any brilliant performance today, but was in the control of the match, despite being 1-2 down with a break at the start of second set.
Ons Jabeur defeated Oceane Dodin with the same score. The 7th seed seemingly finds back the groove after injury issues naggling her during the European clay court season and showed a dominant performance over the last standing home representative in the main draw. There are no many French players left in the WTA draw at the stage of top 32 after loses of Dodin, Caroline Garcia, Leolia Jeanjean and Diane Parry, who made it through the second round.
20 in a row for Danilovic
Olga Danilovic was the player to underline after the qualifying stage, as the Serbian approached the main draw of Roland Garros with a streak of 8 wins in straight sets after prevailing in 3 qualifying matches and winning the ITF tournament in Madrid. The Serbian continues has amazing run to 10 victories and 20 sets won in a row, after defeating Katerina Baindl 6-3 6-2 and Jasmine Paolini 6-2 7-5 in the main draw. Latest match against the Italian was the toughest one, as Danilovic was already losing 1-5 in second set. The great streak was in serious threat, but Danilovic has denied it with a style by winning 6 games in a row and secured her 3rd round spot. The Serbian has practically secured her comeback into top 100 after 5 years of absence. Danilovic was previously ranked as the world's number 96 in the age of 17, being considered as a great prospect. Current run of form indicates, that the future looks bright again for the player, who is still young in the age of 22.
Andreeva storms into top 100
Mirra Andreeva was considered as a dark horse of the French Open after her sensational run in WTA 1000 Rome and being one of the best performing players from the qualifiers field. The 16 years-old does not stop to impress the public, as she defeated Diane Parry with a crushing score 6-1 6-2. The youngster did not give chances for the French representative, who managed to create just one unconverted breakpoint throughout whole the match. Andreeva produced much more from the game, creating 14 breakpoints and converting 5 of them, which resulted in a dominant score at the end. The Russian was also much more consistent, as she made just 15 unforced errors to 38 made by Parry, which was too many to take up any fight against Andreeva.
The youngster has moved up into 98th place in the live WTA rankings. The lift up does not need to be over ahead of possibly the most exciting match-up of 3rd round, where Andreeva meets last year's runner-up Cori Gauff. The American, who is also still a teenager, will need to endure the test from the hand of the 3 years younger player, who already showed sufficient tools to dominate the game during her matches in Paris this week.
Day upsets Keys who makes 74 unforced errors
Kayla Day performed the biggest upset of the second round, winning over Madison Keys in the all-American clash. The current world's number 138 was rated as an underdog with an odd 4.42 ahead of the match with Keys, seeded as #20 in the draw. The lower ranked of Americans has approached the main draw after a thrilling battle against Elina Avanesyan in the final round of qualifiers, ended up in the decisive set's tiebreak. As for now, both of the are still in the contest, because Avanesyan found the place in the main draw as a lucky loser, and approached the third round after making a huge upset over Belinda Bencic in the opening round and defeating Leolia Jeanjean in second match.
Keys was the one who tried to be a dominant force in the match against Day. The 20th seed managed to fight back from being a set down and forced the decider, which was erratic as whole the match from both. Keys has lost 3 service games in a row, which helped Day to move up in front, and despite wasting the first opportunity to serve for the win, the world's number 138 sealed the biggest career's success with a score 6-2 4-6 6-4 eventually. Final stats are really shocking, especially from the perspective of Keys, who commited 74 unforced errors. The 28 years-old American was trying to overpower her opponent and managed to score 40 winners on the other hand, but the scale of shots missed today is really astonishing.
