Stan Wawrinka escapes historic blow

Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka reacts during his Round One match against Czech Republic's Lukas Rosol at Roland Garros. (Photo: AFP)

Stan Wawrinka avoided becoming the first defending champion to lose in the first round at the French Open on Monday when he battled past Lukas Rosol in five tough sets. Wawrinka won 4-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 after battling for three hours.

Third seed Wawrinka fired 56 winners but committed 46 unforced errors and saved eight break points to book a second round clash against Japan’s Taro Daniel.

Wawrinka, 31, had defeated 59th-ranked Rosol in the semi-finals of the Geneva clay-court tournament just last Friday.

But Rosol went into the match on a chilly Court Philippe Chatrier with the pedigree of having famously stunned Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon in 2012.

That free-swinging masterclass almost paid dividends again Monday but once he had let slip two break points at 2-2 in the fourth set, his hopes slowly slipped away.

Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza was also struggling on Court Suzanne Lenglen, coming back from a set down to defeat Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Muguruza, who has made the quarter-finals for the last two years, will take on French wildcard Myrtille Georges, the world number 203, for a place in the last 32.

But the 22-year-old Wimbledon runner-up was far from impressive in the two and a half hour encounter.

Play started two and a half hours late Monday because of more rain with 12 of the 66 scheduled matches pushed back to Tuesday.

However, there was plenty of time for notable firsts.

Qualifier Cagla Buyukakcay beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 5-7, 7-6 (7/2), 6-2 to become the first Turkish woman in the Open era to reach the second round of a Grand Slam.

The 26-year-old Buyukakcay, ranked at 83, had earlier this clay-court season become the first Turk to win a WTA title when she triumphed in Istanbul.

Japan’s Naomi Osaka won her first match at Roland Garros with a 6-4, 7-5 triumph over Latvian 32nd seed Jelena Ostapenko.

Elsewhere, Canadian eighth seed Milos Raonic, a 2014 quarter-finalist, defeated Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (7/5).

Tipsarevic was playing his first Roland Garros since 2013 after being treated for a benign tumour on his left foot.

Murray in action Later Monday, second seed Andy Murray, a three-time semi-finalist in Paris, takes on 37-year-old Radek Stepanek, the oldest man in the draw and one of a record 51 men over the age of 30 to start the first round.