10th-seeded Venus Williams pretty much coasted through her second-round match at Roland Garros, defeating Japan’s Kurumi Nara in straight sets (6-3, 6-1).
Williams, who leads all female players with 20 French Open apperances in the Open Era, found herself in a 3-1 hole during the opening set against Nara. But then she managed to storm back by winning the next seven games and ultimately dispatching her opponent after an hour and 18 minutes of action. In turn, Williams finished with a massive 30-6 edge in winners.
However, shaky play continues to raise doubts as for exactly how far Venus will make it in Roland Garros this year. She committed 30 unforced errors in that previous match after tallying a whopping 44 of them in the opening round versus China’s Qiang Wang.
Williams will now face her toughest competition of the tournament yet in Elise Mertens, and we aren’t too confident that she’ll be able to dominate the Belgian like her past two opponents. Although the 36-year-old WTA Tour stalwart made it all the way to the fourth round of the French Open last year, she’s only advanced past the second round of the tournament in that one instance over the last five seasons.
Make that back-to-back straight-sets wins at Roland Garros for Elise Mertens, who eliminated 105th-ranked Richel Hogenkamp with a convincing 6-3, 6-4 victory on Wednesday.
After stunning 24th-seeded Daria Gavrilova in the opening round, the 21-year-old French Open debutante once again exhibited fantastic form against Hogenkamp. Mertens put 79 percent of her first serves into play and converted five of her seven chances at break points. She’s now broken her opponents 11 out of 17 times in her first two matches of the tournament.
With a handful of upsets already having panned out in the women’s singles draw (World No. 1 Angelique Kerber and No. 6 seed Dominika Cibulkova just to name a couple), it appears that Mertens is well in line to become another dark horse at Roland Garros. The World No. 60 is 7-3 on clay this season, and she nearly won her second singles title of the year at Istanbul against scorching-hot Elina Svitolina.
Mertens won the Hobart International in Australia earlier this January – her maiden WTA Tour singles title – and that victory somehow offsets Venus’ finals appearance at the Australian Open. And as of the moment, the upstart Belgian has committed 20 fewer unforced errors in Roland Garros, and it might very well be her composure that’ll lead her to the upset over Venus this Friday.
Writer’s Prediction
Mertens (+220) does indeed shock Williams and the Parisian crowd with a huge win in three hard-fought sets.
