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| 04 Jun 2001 | |
| Kanepi's great form embarrasses Australian Open runner-up at Roland Garros |
By Chris Bowers
Learning to take crushing defeats is part of tennis, but Sofia Arvidsson’s 6-0 6-1 loss to Kaia Kanepi must be particularly hard.
The Swede, who was the Australian Open finalist in her last Grand Slam outing four months ago, was crushed on court by the newly crowned Milan champion Kaia Kanepi. The neutrals clustered round Court 14 couldn’t fail to be impressed by the Estonian’s play, and it was hard not to feel sorry for Arvidsson having to deal with a player in such devastating form.
The next potential victim for the fourth seeded Kanepi is Dinara Safina, who has one of the 13/16 seeding slots. She reached the third round with a 6-4 6-3 win over Feriel Esseghir, the Algerian failing to capitalise on a break to lead 4-3 in the first set.
But there was good news for Algeria in the boys’ singles, with Lamine Ouahab’s 7-6 6-1 win over Canadian Frank Dancevic. Ouahab is guaranteed a good crowd for his third round match as he faces the 14-year-old French hope Richard Gasquet.
Gasquet followed up his three-sets defeat of the US Open semi-finalist Ytai Abougzir late on Sunday night by beating Matija Zgaga of Slovenia, also 7-6 6-1. Gasquet was always behind in the first set and giving several centimetres away to the big-serving Slovene it looked for much of the match as if Gasquet had met his match. But after winning the first set tiebreak 8-6, he stormed through the second set to further justify the expectations the French have of him.
The boys’ singles top seed Janko Tipsarevic had to show great stamina when he faced his first round match against Christian Chao the same day as flying in from a tournament he won the day before in eastern Europe. When he eventually plays on the full ATP tour, the Australian Open and Coffee Bowl champion will be allowed a day off for travelling between tournaments, but he needed to be straight into his best form.
And he was. He took the first set 6-1, and while Chao got back into it in the second, Tipsarevic moved comfortably into the second round 6-1 6-4, and now plays the Russian Pavel Ivanov.
There were two boys’ seeds who lost, both in 13/16 slots. Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus lost to Santiago Gonzalez of Mexico in the first round, while Frenchman Clement Morel was beaten in the second round by Romanian Adrian Cruciat.
There were no seeding casualties in the girls’ singles, but Myrian Casanova followed up Sunday’s win over the eighth seed Eva Birnarova with a 6-2 7-6 win over Anna Milenkovic. Meanwhile top seed Aniko Kapros dropped just one game against Sunitha Rao en route to the third round.
Full results from the Roland Garros can be found on www.rolandgarros.com
Click here to view the 2001 Roland Garros picture gallery.
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