Viktoriya Tomova (Bulgaria) achieved the first victory in her career in the main draw of Roland Garros after defeating the 16th-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova (Russia) by 2-0 (6:3, 7:6) in 1:31 hours of play.
In the second round, the Bulgarian tennis player will face Wang Xinyu (China), who earlier eliminated Jule Niemeier (Germany).
Viktoriya Tomova played the match with a voluminous bandage on her entire left thigh. The match was delayed by rain and started at least two hours late. The key game in the first set was the sixth, after at 3:2 for the Bulgarian tennis player, the two had already exchanged one early break.
Viktoriya Tomova reached five chances for a new break and took advantage of the last one to lead 4:2 and didn’t allow a turn until the end. It was from the sixth game onwards that Ekaterina Alexandrova’s game was significantly disrupted and she began to make a series of unprovoked errors.
The second set started similarly to the first with a break for the Bulgarian tennis player, but she immediately conceded a rebreak and practically could not enjoy her advantage for long. Viktoriya Tomova broke to zero for 5:4, but when serving for the match, she conceded a rebreak again and missed a great opportunity to win cleanly. Ekaterina Alexandrova then had difficulties with her serve, but although she went through deuce, she made a comeback to 5:6.
It came to a tiebreak and with a lot of nerves and twists and turns after a mistake by Ekaterina Alexandrova, Viktoriya Tomova finally achieved victory at Roland Garros!
For Viktoriya Tomova, this is her third appearance in Paris after 2022 and 2023, and she can already boast of her first victory on French Open. Last year she also faced Ekaterina Alexandrova in the first round and lost by 1-2 (1:6, 6:2, 1:6). In this season in Doha, the Russian also defeated Viktoriya Tomova, which was her third victory in a total of four matches, and the success of the Bulgarian comes from the US Open 2016 with 2-1 (4:6, 6:3, 7:5).
The 29-year-old Russian is 18th in the ranking and 16th-seeded, and her best performance at Roland Garros is reaching the third round three times in 2023, 2020 and 2019.
