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Sam Stosur serves like a man, says beaten Mladenovic

‘I think she’s the only woman player able to hit that hard and that heavy with those conditions.’

I THINK SHE meant it in a nice way?

Kristina Mladenovic has talked up the power of Samantha Stosur’s serve after being knocked out of the French Open today. It was a tighter match for the Australian world number 9 at Roland Garros than her first-round demolition of Kimiko Date-Krumm, but the 6-4 6-3 result over the French hope Mladenovic was still good enough to take the Queenslander through to a third-round clash with former world number one Jelena Jankovic.

Following the rain-delayed encounter, Mladenovic said the conditions on the day suited her opponent and allowed Stosur to use her serve as a serious weapon.

“Sam played a really, really solid match today,” Mladenovic told reporters. “It was just impressive …. especially the serve. I think I played my match and, well it’s just about one break in each set which is very close. And, she was serving just amazing … like a man today, really.

“The conditions, I think it was the best for her and the worst for me. I think she’s the only woman player able to hit that hard and that heavy with those conditions. But I cannot change the weather but of course there’s many positive things from my match but she just played really good today.”

Stosur, for her part, was quietly content with her match.

“I thought the first set had pretty good quality from both of us and it was very, very close,” Stosur told reporters. “Both (of us) maybe had a couple of opportunities on serve to break early and didn’t get it and then that 5-4 game was obviously really important for me to get a real hold on the match.

“I played some good points, maybe got a little bit lucky with that volley, whatever the thing was down the line and then was able to break and then really felt like I kicked on.

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