Romania's Niculescu progresses to French Open women's doubles 3rd round

Romanian tennis player Monica Niculescu paired up with Latvian Jelena Ostapenko progressed to the third round of the women's doubles event at the French Open tournament on Friday in Paris after beating Nao Hibino (Japan)/Oksana Kalashnikova (Georgia), 6-1 6-2 in the second round, agerpres reports.

Niculescu and Ostapenko got an easy victory in just 63 minutes.

The two had significantly higher service percentages, and their opponents did not create any break points.

Niculescu and Ostapenko won 29,325 euros and 240 WTA doubles points for their performance.

They reached the doubles final at the Qatar Open this March.

In the 3rd round, Niculescu/Ostapenko will play the winners between Karolina Pliskova/Kristyna Pliskova (Czech Republic) - Yifan Xu/Shuai Zhang (China).

In the women's doubles competition another Romanian, Irina Begu, has advanced, teamed up with Argentine's Nadia Podoroska, and will face off Japanese Shuko Aoyama/Ena Shibahara in the second round.

On Friday, Romanian Raluca Olaru and Ukrainian Nadiia Kichenok, as well as the Romanian-Kazakh duo Andreea Mitu/Yulia Putintseva lost in the second round.