Marion Bartoli marched through to the fourth round for the first time with a routine victory over a player seeded two places above her in the draw, Israel’s Shahar Peer.
The 16th seed had no answer to the 22-year-old Frenchwoman’s power game, going down 6-3, 6-2 in a rain-delayed 94 minutes.
However, while Peer did show flashes of pure brilliance, 29 unforced errors and a very low break point conversion rate - just one out of eight - tell the tale of a very frustrating day for the Israeli.
The first six games were tight, with both players making in-roads on each other’s service games, with an exceptional display of serving deep onto the baseline.
However as soon as Bartoli took the crucial break at 3-3, Peer’s head appeared to drop. Bartoli further asserted her dominance, bossing Peer around the baseline with her double-handed ground strokes to achieve another break in the ninth game, which helped her land the set 6-4.
A large number of deuce games kicked off the second set, but it was Bartoli then came through unscathed, hustling her way to a 3-1 lead.
Sensing her opponent’s ever-increasing irritation, the Frenchwoman then simply needed to keep the ball in play and wait for Peer to make an error. The set was hers in 41 minutes with the loss of just two games.
Bartoli now faces an interesting fourth round tie with in-form Serb Jelena Jankovic.
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