Kaia Kanepi went through the match without having her serve broken, whilst breaking her opponent's on four occasions. Photo used courtesy of FFP.

PARIS — Estonian Kaia Kanepi has moved passed the first round of the French Open, beating local opponent Pauline Pamentier 6-3, 6-1.

Since discarding her trainer and sponsors under mysterious circumstances earlier this year, Kanepi’s form in turn has suffered, with her world ranking plummeting to well outside the top 100.

However, following some good form playing for Estonia against Belgium in the Fed Cup, Kanepi began to once again find some good form to race through qualifying to make it to the main draw here in Paris.

As Ernests Gulbis can no doubt attest to, playing a French in front of a patriarchal home ground is no easy task.

But unlike Gulbis, Kanepi was able to put the crowd out of her mind to focus on the task in hand, wasting little time in cleaning up her French opponent.

Kanepi went through the match without having her serve broken, whilst breaking her opponent’s on four occasions. She was able to inflict her real damage on her first serve, converting 28 out of 33 first serve points into winners.

The win gives Kanepi little reprieve as she now readies herself to do battle with tournament 4th seed Serb, Jelena Janković in the second round.

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