Halep rallies, Djoker breezes

Paris: World number one and top seed Simona Halep recovered from a horrible first set to reach the second round of the French Open with a 2-6, 6-1, 6-1 win over Alison Riske of the United States on Wednesday.

Halep slumped to 0-5 in the opening set to world number 83 Riske whose only win at the tournament came in 2014.

The Romanian, a runner-up in 2014 and 2017, committed 16 unforced errors in the set but stepped up a gear from that point on to book a second-round match against Taylor Townsend of the United States.

Novak Djokovic's target practice often failed to hit the bullseye but that did not prevent the Serbian eking out a 7-6(1), 6-4, 6-4 second round win over Spanish qualifier Jaume Munar.

The 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 the 155th-ranked Munar.

Djokovic was so restless that after being broken in the ninth game of the first set, instead of sitting down and taking in some 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 on the trot from 2015 to 2016, his surgically repaired elbow got a workout before he set up a third-round clash with Spain's Roberto Bautista Agut.

Eighth seed Petra Kvitova eased into the French Open third round with a 6-0, 6-4 victory over Spain's Lara Arruabarrena.