Playing her first match at the 2017 Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, top seed Angelique Kerber couldn’t find her game on the red clay of Stuttgart and Kristina Mladenovic steadily progressed to victory in their second-round match.
Having won just one set off Kerber in their three previous meetings, Mladenovic survived a very long opening game on serve and from then on pretty much cruised through the first set, continuing the momentum in the second set by going 3-0 up.
While Mladenovic’s break point conversion was perfect 3/3 to that point in the match, the world No.