Chinese tennis qualifiers Zhang and Han bow out from French Open

PARIS, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese women's tennis players Zhang Kailin and Han Xinyun could not make their way to the main draw of 2017 French Open with respective loss in the first round of qualifiers here on Tuesday.

Zhang, placed 179th on WTA world rankings, found it pretty hard to get into the game against Elitsa Kostova of Bulgaria as she trailed 1-4 after the fifth game.

Zhang held her serve in the sixth, and pulled another game back as she overcame a 15-40 deficit to finish her first break throughout the match.

Kostova made a quick response in the next game, finishing her own break to snap further slide. Zhang once saved three set points, but two unforced errors wasted her chance in a 6-3 first set loss.

Zhang made a comeback into the second set to build a 3-2 lead, before suffering three double faults in the seventh game, giving the Bulgarian a comeback by leading 4-3. After taking four games in a row, Kostova sealed the win with another 6-3 in the matchup lasting one hour and 19 minutes.

"The loss today was not about my poor performance, but that I could not get into the game due to my nagging injuries, which stopped me from playing and training regularly," revealed Zhang, adding that she will probably miss the Wimbledon Open, another Grand Slam tournament, for her recovery and routine training.

"I didn't strike a balance between competing and training, and I had to admit that I put too much emphasis on the former one, so I needed more training on dealing with that," commented Zhang.

Qualifying seventh seed Han also suffered a disappointing first-round elinimation from the tournament in a two-set match against Montserrat Gonzalez of Paraguay.

Left-handed Han lost the oepning set 6-2, while bouncing back to force into a tiebreak. However, Han could not hold on her 4-1 lead in the tiebreak and Gonzalez grabbed her fourth match point at 10-8 on Han's double faults.

After men's qualifier Wu Di's exit on Monday, no players of the Chinese team kept their hope of securing a main draw berth alive.

In the five-day qualifying from Monday, 16 men's and 12 women's Roland Garros main draw participants will come out from 128 and 96 qualifiers respectively.