Paris, May 28: Top-ranked Victoria Azarenka turned it on when she had to Monday, winning 12 of the final 14 games to reach the second round at the French Open.
The Australian Open champion, who took over the No. 1 ranking by winning in Melbourne, struggled for long stretches but came back to beat Alberta Brianti of Italy 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-2.
Brianti, a 32-year-old veteran who has won one WTA title in her career, won the first set and then led 4-0 in the second before losing six straight games.
Although Azarenka rebounded in the final two sets, she finished the match with 60 unforced errors.
Roger Federer managed a more straight-forward victory, beating Tobias Kamke of Germany 6-2, 7-5, 6-3.
The 16-time major champion equaled Jimmy Connors' record of 233 career Grand Slam match wins in the Open era. Federer is 233-35 at tennis' top four tournaments. Connors was 233-49.
Later Monday, top-ranked Novak Djokovic was scheduled to play his first match of the tournament.
Defending women's champion Li Na also won easily, beating Sorana Cirstea of Romania 6-2, 6-1.
Last year, Li became the first Chinese player to win a Grand Slam singles title when she won at Roland Garros.
No. 15 Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia and No. 19 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia also advanced to the second round. But men's No. 15 Feliciano Lopez retired from his match with a side muscle injury after losing the first five games of the first set to Florent Serra.
Azarenka was first up in the main stadium, and she didn't look good at the start. In the first set alone, she had 28 unforced errors.
The top-ranked Belarussian started the 2012 season with a 26-match winning streak. Her first loss came in the quarterfinals of the Sony Ericsson Open.
No top-seeded woman has ever lost in the first round at the French Open since the tournament began to allow foreign entrants in 1925.
In the other Grand Slam tournaments, it has happened four times, most recently when top-ranked and top-seeded Martina Hingis lost in the first round at Wimbledon in 2001.
For Venus Williams, just playing at this year's French Open was an accomplishment. Winning was a bonus.
Williams played at a major tournament for the first time since last August, when she withdrew before her second-round match at the U.S. Open. It was then that she revealed that she had been diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome, a condition that can cause fatigue and joint pain.
It didn't slow her down in the last two sets Sunday. The seven-time Grand Slam champion recovered from a poor start and beat 19-year-old Paula Ormaechea of Argentina 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 to reach the second round.
"I just learned how to live with this. It's different. I have a lot to learn still," Williams said. "I learned how to just - just learning. So I think that's my biggest challenge. I learn a lot every week, especially having to play a professional sport.
"So that's a challenge, just learning to live."
Williams was one of six major champions who advanced on the opening day of the clay-court tournament. The only one who lost was Andy Roddick, the 2003 U.S. Open winner.
