AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. -- Amelie Mauresmo capped a perfect day for seeded players with a 6-0, 7-5 victory over Olga Savchuk in the first round of the Bausch & Lomb Championships on Monday night.
After Mauresmo breezed through the opening set, Savchuk failed to deliver on two set points serving with a 5-4 edge in the second, then foot faulted on a break point to even the set at 5-all.
Mauresmo regained control of the match and took the next two games for a satisfying straight-set win in her first match on clay this year.
"I was pretty happy to come back from 5-4 to 5-all because going into a third set is never easy," said Mauresmo, the 2001 Bausch & Lomb champion whose recent rankings slide has her seeded 11th this year. "It was important to get the momentum back because she was really rolling."
Other seeded winners on Monday included No. 9 Sybille Bammer, No. 13 Virginie Razzano and No. 15 Anabel Medina Garrigues.
No. 1 seed Maria Sharapova and the rest of the top eight seeds received byes into the second round.
Anna Chakvetadze, Daniela Hantuchova, Marion Bartoli and Patty Schnyder round out the top five in the field, which also includes three-time tournament champion Lindsay Davenport (No. 16).
The event lost lustre recently when Venus Williams, Elena Dementieva, Nicole Vaidisova, Nadia Petrova and defending champion Tatiana Golovin withdrew.
Davenport will play her first-round match against American wild card Vania King during the day. Sharapova starts at night against Czech qualifier Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, who defeated Timea Bacsinszky 6-2, 6-4 on Monday.
Mauresmo, who will play the winner of Tuesday's match between American Bethanie Mattek and Sorana Cirstea, showcased the talent that had once vaulted her to No. 1 in the world and a pair of grand slam titles in a dominating first set.
But Savchuk went up 3-0 to start the second and hung tough while both players struggled from the service line.
"I kind of let her come back into the match a little bit in that second set," Mauresmo said. "When you take confidence like she did in the beginning of the second set, then play gets a little more equal. I probably wanted to do too much in that second set instead of staying focused and playing a very simple and basic game."
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