By Ashley Marshall, USTA.com
American Shelby Rogers pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the first round at the French Open on Monday with one of her finest victories yet.
Rogers rallied to defeat No. 17 seed and reigning Emirates Airline US Open Series champion Karolina Pliskova, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, on Day 2 to book her place in the second round on the red clay of Roland Garros for just the second time in her career.
Ranked 108th in the world, Rogers earned her fourth ever win against a Top 20 player and her first at a Grand Slam event. The last time she defeated a Top 20 player was when she toppled Genie Bouchard in the round of 32 at the Canadian Open in 2014; she had been 0-8 against those players since that victory.
Rogers (pictured above) will now meet Elena Vesnina on Wednesday after the 29-year-old Russian defeated American Madison Brengle. The winner of that match could potentially meet 10th-seeded Petra Kvitova in the third round.
The 23-year-old from South Carolina was not the only American to advance on the second consecutive rain-delayed afternoon of competition in the French capital.
No. 23 seed Jack Sock, 23, outlasted Robin Haase, 6-3, 7-5, 3-6, 6-7, 6-2, in a match that began Sunday and lasted three hours and 20 minutes, and CoCo Vandeweghe, 24, edged past Naomi Broady, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3. Sock faces eccentric German Dustin Brown in Round 2, while Vandeweghe will meet No. 25 seed Irina-Camelia Begu, who defeated Vandeweghe’s Fed Cup doubles partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands in three sets.
On Court 14, world No. 103 Bjorn Fratangelo was victorious in the only all-American first-round match, posting a 6-3, 6-1, 6-7, 6-3 triumph over compatriot Sam Querrey. The win gives the 22-year-old Pittsburgh native, who earned a wild card into the main draw by winning the USTA Pro Circuit Roland Garros Wild Card Challenge, his first appearance in the second round of a major and could see him break into the Top 100 for the first time in his career.
Next up for Fratangelo is Frenchman Richard Gasquet, who is playing in his 13th French Open and is coming off his best year yet. The No. 9 seed has been to the fourth round here in four of the past five years, but the American will enter their first head-to-head with confidence after winning a Challenger-level clay court title in Savannah, Ga., in April, finishing runner-up at a clay-court tuneup event in Bordeaux last week and the making a run to the semifinal of a clay event in Sarasota, Fla., last month.
Elsewhere on Monday at Roland Garros, Sloane Stephens, 23, cruised into the second round with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Margarita Gasparyan.
In other matches, Nicole Gibbs lost to Heather Watson in a contest that was continued from Day 1 and Christina McHale fell to Myrtille Georges of France. On the men’s side, Steve Johnson lost in straight sets to veteran Fernando Verdasco and Denis Kudla fell to Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic.
John Isner’s first-round match with Aussie right-hander John Millman was suspended with the score tied at one set apiece. Isner, the No. 15 seed, lost the first-set tiebreak, 7-4, but bounced back to win the second set breaker, 14-12. Weather permitting, it will be continued as the second match on Court 10 on Tuesday.