PARIS, May 31, 2018 (News Wires) - Gabrine Muguruza cruised past French wild card player Fiona Ferro 6-4, 6-3 on Thursday, booking her place in the French Open third round. The Spaniard sealed the match with a whipped cross-court forehand, though for much of the match the No 3 seed struggled to find her rhythm and range on the forehand. Muguruza, who won at Roland Garros in 2016 and heads to Wimbledon this year as defending champion, had not played 21-year-old Ferro before Thursday's encounter. "She's young and she's talented," Muguruza said in a post match interview on court Suzanne Lenglen. "These matches are very difficult." Muguruza arrived in Paris as one of five women with a chance of claiming the world No 1 spot. Her form leading up to the clay-court Grand Slam was mixed, exiting the Madrid Open in the third round and suffering a defeat in her opening match of the Rome Open. But she said she felt good in Paris. "The French Open is the tournament for me. My body is good and my tennis is following," she said. Muguruza hit 26 winners and 23 unforced errors, often over-cooking her forehand from the baseline. She eases into the third round for the fifth consecutive year, and will face the winner of the match between 2010 French Open runner-up Samantha Stosur of Australia and 30-seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia. Heather Watson's French Open came to an abrupt end on Thursday after a 6-3 6-4 win by Elise Mertens. Mertens, the world no.16, made light work of the Brit in the first round breaking every single one of her service games, though Watson returned the favour on several occasions. However Watson found a glimmer of hope in the second set after breaking Mertens' serve to narrow the Belgian's lead to 4-3 going on to hold on to her own to level the second set 4-4. But it was not enough to undo the damage and a ruthless Mertens went on to win the next two games in a match that saw Watson make 37 unforced errors. Dominc Thiem held off a challenge by Stefanos Tsitsipas to progress to the third round at the French Open in Paris, on Thursday. The seventh seed took the first set 6-2 but the Greek no.1 fought back to claim the second 6-2. Thiem avoided an upset by the 19-year-old, ranked 39th in the world, to win the next two sets 6-4 each. Elsewhere third seed Marin Cilic was not able to beat world no.188 in straight sets, losing the third on a tie-break after initially taking a 6-2 6-2 lead. Winning the fourth set 7-5, it was CIlic who ultimately progressed to the next round. Novak Djokovic enjoyed a straight-sets victory over Jaume Munar to reach the third round of the French Open, but it was not all easy going in his 7-6(1) 6-4 6-4 win. It is just as well Novak Djokovic did not choose archery or shooting as his preferred sport. Instead of a small circular board or a flying skeet to aim at, Djokovic has half a tennis court to use as his target. At the French Open on Wednesday, however, Djokovic's shots often failed to hit the bullseye. The once all-conquering Serb started off by serving a fault, ended the opening game with a double fault and fired plenty of wayward shots wide and long as he tried to subdue Spanish qualifier Jaume Munar. While the scorecard will show that Djokovic eked out a straightforward-looking 7-6(1) 6-4 6-4 victory, those following the action on a sweltering Court Suzanne Lenglen will know the second-round win was anything but easy. "I went through my ups and downs and I'm not really satisfied with the performance. I just played enough in the right moments to win the match," admitted 20th seed Djokovic, who is still trying to rediscover his golden touch since undergoing elbow surgery this year. "I have good days of serving when everything flows. But the issue is that I had to (change) the service motion a lot because of the injury (and) I changed the racket. "I've already had three different service motions this year. So it's something that I'm working on. At times today, I didn't feel rhythm at all of the serve. So I was missing a lot of first serves." Djokovic was so restless that after being broken by the 155th-ranked Munar in the ninth game, instead of sitting down and taking in fluids, he simply walked over to the other side of the net and went through the motions of playing some air shots. While it was obvious his game is still a long way from the form he produced to win four slams in a row from 2015 to 2016, he was quick to put his struggles into perspective.
