Stan Wawrinka cruises into French Open third round

The 27th-seeded Karlovic produced 41 aces in his 6-7 (2), 6-3, 7-6 (3), 6-7 (4), 12-10 win over the Australian wild-card entry, including three in the final game.

Still, this would not have been the first significant and surprising victory of his career: Rosol defeated No. 1 Rafael Nadal in the second round at Wimbledon in 2012, displaying the same sort of go-for-broke, flat groundstrokes and intimidating serve he used to such great effect against Wawrinka.

After two flawless rounds, Kei Nishikori dropped two sets en route to the fourth round of the French Open with a 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 2-6, 6-4 victory over Fernando Verdasco.

The third seed won 7-6(7) 6-3 6-4 on a sunny Court Suzanne Lenglen, although it was by no means straightforward against a skilful opponent ranked 93rd in the world.

One small consolation: Defending champion Stan Wawrinka isn’t firing on all cylinders, either. In all, Wawrinka made 46 unforced errors, 17 on the backhand side. “It’s really good victory, good win for me”, said Stan Wawrinka.. “For sure there were some ups and downs, it could have been better, but in general I think it’s been a good day”.

“I think I had the music on or something”.

A day that began two hours late after torrential rain ended with world number two Murray hanging on against 37-year-old Czech qualifier Radek Stepanek having lost the opening two sets in the Philippe Chatrier Court gloom.

The pair are now level at two sets apiece 6-3 6-3 0-6 2-4 to Stepanek.

No. 24 Sloane Stephens reached the fourth round the previous four years and had little trouble defeating Margarita Gasparyan of Russian Federation, 6-4, 6-3, and seemed so relaxed that she spent some of her postmatch news conference discussing the blankets she carries around with her while traveling to enhance her comfort.

He dominated the second set but was a break down in the third before finishing with a flourish to secure a third round clash against French 30th seed Jeremy Chardy. Each player has held serve and Djokovic nearly has the Chinese Taipei player at break point – and concedes!

Stanislas Wawrinka remains on course to retain the French Open title after beating Taro Daniel in three sets to reach the third round of the Grand Slam.

Karlovic will face either second seed Andy Murray or France’s Mathias Bourgue for a place in the last 16 at Roland Garros for the first time.

The eighth-seeded Canadian converted his fifth match point to get past 133rd-ranked “lucky loser” Andrej Martin of Slovakia 7-6 (4), 6-2, 6-3 at Court 1 on Friday.

Second seed Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, however, brushed aside Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski 6-0, 6-2.

There was also a second-round win for a Japanese player in the women’s draw, with Naomi Osaka beating Mirjana Lucic-Baroni 6-3, 6-3.

Elsewhere, number 15 seed John Isner prevailed over Teymuraz Gabashvili 7-6 (7), 4-6, 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 in a five-set thriller.