Britain's Emma Raducanu hides her face as she plays Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus during their second round match of the French Open. Photo / AP
Britain's Emma Raducanu hides her face as she plays Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus during their second round match of the French Open. Photo / AP
U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu is out of the French Open in the second round.
Raducanu lost to Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 to end her Roland Garros tournament debut on Wednesday.
The 19-year-old Raducanu broke Sasnovich in the fifth game of the opening set, hitting consecutive backhand winners followed by a forehand to clinch it.
Sasnovich couldn't convert on three chances to break her opponent in the first set but took advantage with two breaks to start the second, when the 47th-ranked player also won 12 of 14 service points.
The 12th-seeded Raducanu failed to convert on five break-point chances at 1-1 in the third set as Sasnovich recorded her 16th career victory over a top-20 player.
Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus waves after defeating Britain's Emma Raducanu during their second round match of the French Open. Photo / AP
Raducanu, who also lost to Sasnovich at Indian Wells last year in the Briton's first match after winning the title at Flushing Meadows, had 17 winners and 33 unforced errors on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
Sasnovich advanced to the third round at Roland Garros for the first time. This is her seventh appearance.
Two-time Grand Slam champion Victoria Azarenka of Belarus also reached the third round by beating Andrea Petkovic 6-1, 7-6 (3).
The most intriguing women's matchup of the day pits 2019 U.S. Open champion Bianca Andreescu against Olympic gold medalist Belinda Bencic.
In the men's draw, Novak Djokovic eased into the third round with a straight-set victory over Alex Molcan.
The top-ranked Djokovic defeated the 24-year-old Slovakian 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 (4) at Court Suzanne Lenglen.
Molcan is coached by Djokovic's long-time coach Marian Vajda and was able to push Djokovic to a third-set tiebreaker. But Molcan threw his racket down in frustration after hitting the ball into the net — his 34th unforced error — to fall behind 6-3 before Djokovic closed it out.
The 20-time Grand Slam champion next faces 32-year-old Slovenian Aljaž Bedene.
Meanwhile rising star Carlos Alcaraz saved a match point in the fourth set and erased an early deficit in the fifth to overcome Albert Ramos-Vinolas 6-1, 6-7 (7), 7-5, 6-7 (2), 6-4.
The sixth-seeded Alcaraz grabbed six of the final seven games, and the last half-dozen points, to finish off the second-round victory that lasted more than 4 1/2 hours.
Alcaraz is just 19 but arrived in Paris with a lot of expectations — of his own and of others — based on his breakthrough season that includes a tour-leading four titles. He is the youngest player to break into the top 10 of the ATP rankings since Rafael Nadal in 2005.
En route to the Madrid Open title on red clay earlier this month, Alcaraz became the first man to beat both Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the same tournament on that surface.
But he was quite close to making a quicker-than-anyone-expected exit against fellow Spaniard Ramos-Vinolas, a 34-year-old who is ranked 44th.
Alcaraz was a point from losing while Ramos-Vinolas served for the victory at 5-4 in the fourth set. But Ramos-Vinolas missed a forehand there. Eighty minutes later, after trailing 3-0 in the fifth, Alcaraz earned his first match point and converted it with an ace.
