FACED with a tough first round opponent, third seed Caroline Garcia has escaped through to the Round of 16 courtesy of a winning third set tiebreaker at Lyon.

The first day of main draw action opened at France with Garcia up against Belgian youngster, Greet Minnen. Despite being ranked outside the top 100, Minnen has the potential to be a top 30 player and it showed in the match, pushing Garcia all the way during the two-hour and 16-minute match. In the end, the experienced world number 46 booked safe passage through to the next round, winning 6-4 1-6 7-6, overcoming a minor lapse in the second set and then holding on in the third to win 7-5 in the tiebreaker. Garcia won 75 per cent of her first serve points of a solid 61.9 per cent efficiency, whilst creating a whopping 18 break point opportunities. Credit has to be given to Minnen for defending 16 of those opportunities, and the Belgian actually broke three times – once more than Garcia. Whilst Minnen was better off Garcia’s second serve (50 per cent), Garcia’s overall serve and return was slightly stronger, though Minnen can consider herself unlucky having won two more points overall than the third seed.

In other results, Garcia’s fourth seeded compatriot Alice Cornet also moved through to the next round with a 7-5 6-0 win over German Antonio Lottner, while fifth seed Belgian, Alison Van Uytvanck booked a spot in the last 16 with a 6-1 6-3 victory over Katarzyna Kawa of Poland. In unseedeed results, Romanian duo, Jaqueline Cristian and Irina Bara made it through in very different circumstances, as Cristian dumped Australian Priscilla Hon in 74 minutes, while Bara had to survived almost three hours before knocking out Hungarian, Timea Babos in three sets. Elsewhere, German Anna-Lenna Friedsam defeated Russian Anastasiya Komardina 6-2 6-2, while Belgian Ysaline Bonaventure knocked out Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in straight sets.

ROUND OF 32 RESULTS:

[3] C. Garcia (FRA) defeated G. Minnen (BEL) 6-4 1-6 7-6
[4] A. Cornet (FRA) defeated A. Lottner (GER) 7-5 6-0
[5] A. Van Uytvanck (BEL) defeated K. Kawa (POL) 6-1 6-3
A. Friedsam (GER) defeated A. Komardina (RUS) 6-2 6-2
J. Cristian (ROU) defeated P. Hon (AUS) 6-2 6-0
I. Bara (ROU) defeated T. Babos (HUN) 6-3 6-7 6-4
Y. Bonaventure (BEL) defeated M. Kostyuk (UKR) 6-4 6-4