Three’s company: it’s Serbia’s day in Paris

While Ivanovic’s win was painfully easy, Jankovic’s was just downright painful. She needed a 10-minute medical time-out after game three of the second set against Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska before she crawled past the finishing line with a 6-3, 7-6 victory.

“The whole arm is a mess,” said Jankovic, who resembled a wrestler pinned to the floor as the tournament trainer massaged her arm and shoulder back to life. “I started to feel the pain in the beginning of the second set and since then it’s been pain, pain, pain,” said the 23-year-old, who will next face Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro.

No mercy

The Paris crowd had barely got through the scrum at the turnstiles as Ivanovic, who by each passing minute looks like improving on her runner-up finish of last year, showed no mercy against the lamentable Cetkovska. The unseeded Czech, who had not dropped a set in the tournament, looked like a decent threat going on a high-quality opening rally, but once Ivanovic got her eye in she folded quicker than a bad poker hand.

Ivanovic pounded her with winners and even when the Czech carved out two break points in game five of the second, she slouched with a knowing smile when Ivanovic snuffed out any whiff of a comeback.

“It was much tougher than it probably looked, or the results indicates,” said a generous Ivanovic, who has lost a paltry 15 games at Roland Garros so far this year.

“I had to work really hard, and I played almost without mistake today.” She now plays Swiss 10th seed Patty Schnyder.

Djokovic was in no mood to let the Paul-Henri Mathieu put him off his mission of a first Roland Garros title. He swept past the French 18th seed 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 and now faces his childhood training partner Ernests Gulbis of Latvia for a place in the semis.

Gulbis is the only Latvian ever to grace the Grand Slam stage and the 19-year-old did the Baltic state proud by silencing the partisan crowd on Court Suzanne Lenglen with a 6-4, 7-6, 6-3 win over Frenchman Michael Llodra.

Dream run

“I’m happy. I mean, after the match, I don’t want to jump around and do crazy stuff. I’m just relieved that at last it’s over,” said Gulbis, who chose practice on clay over trying to qualify for Masters Series events in Hamburg and Rome this year.

Unseeded Gulbis took his chance on his only break point in the first set and sealed the opener with his fourth ace.

Llodra fought back from a break down to take the second to a tiebreak and used every tactic in the book, including two shots from between his legs to try and upend the Latvian. But Gulbis stood firm, won the tiebreak 7-4 and charged through the third in 37 minutes.

Paes-Dlouhy crash out

Leander Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy crashed out of men’s doubles competition after losing 6-4, 6-4 at the hands of Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay and Luis Horna of Peru in the pre-quarterfinals here.

Nothing went right for the ninth seeded Indo-Czech duo and they were rusty throughout the 64-minute contest.

In the mixed doubles, Mahesh Bhupathi and Jie Zheng of China defeated Paes and Nadia Petrova of Russia 7-5, 6-4 in a 72-minute first round contest. The Indo-Chinese duo will now meet sixth seeded pair of Cara Black and Paul Hanley.

Yuki Bambri also made an early exit in the boys’s singles after suffering a 6-2, 6-1 defeat against Guillaume Rufin of France in the opening round.