Serena escapes as women’s seeds continue to fall

Serena Williams

The pre-tournament shortlist of favourites for the French Open women’s crown continues to shrink and for a while it looked as though the name of top seed Serena Williams would also vanish on Thursday.

Shortly after former world number one Caroline Wozniacki was knocked out by Julia Goerges, meaning the third, fifth and sixth women’s seeds have all departed before round three, 33-year-old Williams stepped on Court Suzanne Lenglen to face unheralded 21-year-old German Anna-Lena Friedsam.

It looked like a mismatch but 105th-ranked Friedsam gave the 19-times grand slam champion a torrid time, taking the first set off the American before a nervy Williams recovered to scrape into the third round 5-7 6-3 6-3.

Twice former champion Williams has suffered at the French before, namely last year when she was beaten by Spain’s Garbine Muguruza at the same stage and more memorably in 2012 when France’s Virginie Razzano knocked her out in round one.

And with her trademark groundstrokes regularly sailing over the baseline and even her fearsome serve deserting her in the first set - she was broken three times - another blot on her incredible grand slam record looked possible.

Even when she led 4-2 in the second set Williams looked shaky, going 0-40 down and dropping serve, but once she got level and broke Friedsam’s serve at the start of the decider she finally began to relax.

She will have to sharpen up considerably though against former world number one Victoria Azarenka in the next round.

Denmark’s Wozniacki joined the exodus of women’s seeds which includes Romanian third seed Simona Halep, last year’s runner-up, and number six Eugenie Bouchard of Canada, losing 6-4 7-6(4) to Goerges on a blustery Phillipe Chatrier court.

Fourth seed Petra Kvitova survived her own trial, however, coming back to beat Spain’s Silvia Soler-Espinosa 6-7(4) 6-4 6-2 despite 54 unforced errors.