PARIS: Fourth seed Petra Kvitova reached the third round of the French Open on Thursday with a 6-7 (4/7), 6-4, 6-2 win over Spain's Silvia Soler-Espinosa.
But it was another nervy showing from the Wimbledon champion who was taken to the limit in her opening match against New Zealander Marina Erakovic.
The Czech Fed Cup winner, a semi-finalist at Roland Garros in 2012, dropped serve twice in the opening set before the more consistent Soler-Espinosa took the tie-break 7/4.
Kvitova was hanging on early in the second set, but finally started to find her range with her groundstrokes and broke to take a 4-3 lead.
That was short-lived, however, as Soler-Espinosa battled back onto level terms in the next game, but Kvitova took the next two to level the set scores.
The fourth seed took command early on in the deciding set and back-to-back breaks saw her safely past the post and into the third round.
"It was a tough match again. Second round of a Grand Slam is always difficult," she said.
Kvitova will go up against either Ana Konjuh of Croatia or Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania for a place in the last 16.
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