PARIS, France - The Top 2 Americans in the draw - Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Varvara Lepchenko - toughed out late wins on Day 1 of the French Open on Sunday night and will now have to battle it out in the second round.
World No.34 Mattek-Sands was the first of the pair to advance, rallying from 62 42 down to beat Arantxa Parra Santonja, 26 76(5) 63. Early on in the match Mattek-Sands' aggressive game was missing its mark while Parra Santonja stayed steady; things turned drastically for the American in the second set.
"I didn't even know it was that bad," Mattek-Sands said when asked about the deficit she faced. "I wasn't feeling my returns in the first set and a lot of the second set. Returns are my biggest strength. You have days like that. I've lost a lot of matches where if I'm not playing so well I lose - but I was determined. Even though I wasn't feeling 100% about everything, I wanted to fight."
A few weeks ago in Estoril, Mattek-Sands fell in the first round to the crafty Monica Niculescu in a three-hour-plus match. The next week she made the quarterfinals of Madrid, beating two French Open champions along the way.
"The biggest thing after my loss in Estoril was it was one of those times I wasn't feeling 100% and I lost, and I wasn't happy with how I played," the 26-year-old recalled. "After that loss I sat down and defined my game. I said, I'm going to play this way whether I'm winning or losing - I'm not going to second guess myself. Once I wrote it down, I really believe in my game right now."
World No.77 Lepchenko wrapped up the day's action with a 63 26 63 grinder over No.18 seed Flavia Pennetta. Her win over the No.19-ranked Pennetta was her second career Top 20 win, after a 62 60 rout of then-No.18 Patty Schnyder at a much smaller clay court event in 2009, over in Ponte Vedra Beach.
"I just kept fighting and trying not to think about anything, but the thoughts were creeping in my mind," Lepchenko, who turned 25 on Saturday, said about the tight ending to the match. "A lot of it is mental. It's not only about your fitness. It's 50-50 - you have to be ready both mentally and physically."
Although Lepchenko isn't a citizen of the US yet, she is a resident and has been playing under the American flag for a while. "I wish with all my heart to play for the US as a citizen. At the moment I'm not a citizen, I'm just a resident who has been living in the States for 10 years and growing up there and being supported by all the people who help me out. I consider myself an American."
Mattek-Sands leads Lepchenko in their head-to-head series, 3-1.
Seeded winners were Sam Stosur, Jelena Jankovic, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Julia Goerges and Tsvetana Pironkova. Read more about No.8 seed Stosur's first round victory by clicking here.
Apart from Pennetta, the only seed to fall was No.19 seed Shahar Peer, who lost to María José Martínez Sánchez. Read more about that match here.
