Launched almost two hours behind the initial schedule due to very capricious weather, the match was interrupted a little more than an hour at the beginning of the second set.
This forced break did not allow the 29-year-old Frenchwoman, already leading 6-4, 1-1, to restore order in a disjointed tennis, marred by many direct faults and missed volleys.
Broken again at 3-3 in the second set and very annoyed, Garcia, the last French woman in contention in the women's draw, could not do anything to prevent this new premature elimination at the beginning of the year complicated for her.
The Frenchwoman was never able to find her rhythm, not helped by the rain that had led to a brief first break in the first set. In the fourth game, the two players were forced to observe a forced break of several minutes, sitting on their chairs under an umbrella, to wait for a heavy downpour to pass.
Exempted from the 1st round, Garcia had hardly beaten in the 2nd round the Romanian Ana Bogdan (59th) 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
A little more than two weeks before Roland-Garros (May 28-June 11), and despite the return to her side in April of coach Bertrand Perret, who had accompanied her in her breathtaking 2022 season, she had already suffered a lot against an opponent who served for the match at 5-4 in the third set.
Irregular since the beginning of the year, Caroline Garcia has not managed to string together three victories in a row since the Monterrey tournament in early March, where she lost in the final against Croatian Donna Vekic.
With the elimination of Garcia, seeded N.5, the women's tournament in Rome has already lost four of the five members of its "Top 5" already orphaned by Aryna Sabalenka (N.2), Jessica Pegula (N.3) and Ons Jabeur (N.4).
© 2023 AFP