(Provided by Tennis World USA)
French fifth seed Caroline Garcia braced herself against Xiyu Wang to come through to the second round of the French Open on Friday. The highest-seeded home player, in fact the only seeded home player across the men’s and women’s draws, needed two hours and 38 minutes to post a 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-4.
After both players had traded breaks in the opener, the eventual winner of the set had to be decided by the tie-break. Garcia’s consistency proved to be decisive and she was able to go up in the match. In the second set, Wang upped her level considerably and was able to break Garcia’s serve early on in the set.
The higher-ranked player had her chances across the set but Wang prevailed time and again to take the set and send the match into the decider. Garcia’s shot-making shone through in the deciding set and she kept pushing at her opponent, who struggled even with her serve.
The left-hander had nine double faults for the match, four of which came in the third set alone. Wang, however, did well to keep Garcia at bay each time until the 10th game. Serving to stay in the match, pressure told on Wang and two errors off her racquet brought up match points for…
