No.4 seed Elena Rybakina was one of five Grand Slam champions in first-round action at Roland Garros on Tuesday. Three of those champions advanced, including No.2 Aryna Sabalenka, while two fell in their opening matches.

Rybakina started slowly and needed two goes to seal the win. In between, she was near-untouchable as she defeated Greet Minnen 6-2, 6-3 on Tuesday in the first round of Roland Garros.

The former Wimbledon champion was playing her first match in over three weeks, since her Madrid semifinal loss to Aryna Sabalenka, after illness forced her to withdraw from Rome. There was a trace of rust at the start of the match, which she began with eight straight unforced errors, including a double fault to drop serve in the opening game. At the end, she squandered her first match point at 5-1 with a netted drop shot attempt, and needed a second chance to serve out victory.

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But for the majority of the match, Rybakina was in dazzling form. From 2-0 down, she rattled off 10 successive games, raining winners down on Minnen from all parts of the court. The Kazakhstani's forehand was the bedrock of her run, but she also deployed successful drop shots repeatedly and was quick to swarm the net when opportunity presented itself.

In total, she fired 36 winners to 21 unforced errors, and won 14 out of 21 points at net. 

Rus topples Kerber: Rybakina could have faced a fellow Grand Slam champion in the second round, but it was not to be. In a clash between left-handers, Arantxa Rus of the Netherlands defeated three-time major champion Angelique Kerber of Germany 6-4, 6-3.

World No.50 Rus needed 85 minutes to oust former World No.1 Kerber in their first meeting, clinching a spot in the second round against Rybakina. Rybakina beat Rus in the first round of Roland Garros two years ago.

Rus' heavy groundstrokes have served her well on clay throughout her career -- including in an upset of then-World No.2 Kim Clijsters at 2011 Roland Garros -- and she used them to perfection against Kerber on Tuesday. The Dutchwoman fired 28 winners, doubling Kerber's 14.

Meanwhile, Kerber had 10 more unforced errors than winners on the day. After a promising run to the Rome Round of 16 in her last event, Kerber could not get going at her first appearance in Paris since giving birth to her daughter last year. 

Azarenka cruises, Stephens falls: Two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka had a quick day on Tuesday. No.19 seed Azarenka needed exactly one hour to defeat 2020 Roland Garros semifinalist Nadia Podoroska 6-1, 6-0.

Azarenka, who also made the Roland Garros semifinals in 2013, won 85 percent of her first-service points and was never broken in the match.

Azarenka has never dropped a set in her three meetings with Podoroska, which have all come at Grand Slam events. Azarenka rolled past the Argentine at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon last year.

2017 US Open champion Sloane Stephens, though, joined Kerber on the sidelines. In a clash between two of the highest-ranked unseeded players in the field, World No.39 Putintseva breezed past 35th-ranked Stephens 6-1, 6-2 in just 55 minutes.

Putintseva and Stephens have faced off eight times over the years, with Putintseva now holding a 5-3 lead in their rivalry. Stephens beat Putintseva at Roland Garros last year, but Putintseva has been the dominant force in 2024, having just defeated Stephens at Rome earlier in the month.

Since March, Putintseva is having an exceptional season at big events. She reached the Round of 16 at Indian Wells and the quarterfinals at Miami and Madrid, all WTA 1000 events. The Kazakh has pulled her ranking all the way up from No.80 in these last few months.