Francesca Schiavone became victim of another major upset in this year’s French Open as she was beaten by the Croatian youngster Ajla Tomljanovic in the opening round. The Italian veteran lost in the straight sets by 3-6, 3-6.

It might have been the last time that Schiavone made an appearance at Roland Garros. She is going to be 34 years of age pretty soon and the way her performances have been going downhill quite continuously; it seems highly unlikely that she would push herself for one more season.

In her 16 years old professional career thus far, Schiavone has won just one Grand Slam and that triumph had come at Roland Garros only 4 years back in 2010. She had done remarkably well in the French Open in the following year as well i.e. in 2011 when she made it to the title round.

So, she has been a good clay court player over the years and thus, even at this stage of her career, nobody had expected her to be sent packing from the very first round in the French Open, but, that happened.

More than the defeat, the thing which would worry the Schiavone fans is that she couldn’t compete at all against a player who is more than 10 years younger than her.

In just about 1 hour and 20 minutes, Tomljanovic crushed Schiavone with extreme authority.

Schiavone has fallen down quite significantly in the world rankings in the last few months because of her poor form. She is currently not even one of the top 100 players in the world. She is ranked at the 130^th position. She would definitely like to climb up a little bit in the rankings with some good performances in the grass court season.