Serena Williams, the only former French Open champion left in the draw, was stunned in the third round by Katarina Srebotnik, ensuring that there would be a new champion this year. Williams had never previously lost to Srebotnik in four previous attempts, and had defeated her in the second round of the 2001 French Open and as recently as in the third round of the 2008 Family Circle Cup, where she won the title as part of a seventeen-match winning streak compiled between February and May. Her third round exit was her worst performance at the tournament since 1999, when she also fell in the third round. Two ESPN experts had touted Serena Williams as the pre-tournament favourite; those same two experts also predicted that Ana Ivanovic, the 2007 runner-up whom Serena Williams would have met in the quarter-finals, would make an early exit, when, in fact, the exact opposite occurred and Ivanovic won the championship amidst a form slump which saw her suffer early defeats in Miami and Rome. Williams had said prior to the French Open that she had "enjoyed her best preparation since winning the event in 2002"; entering the tournament, she had won 23 matches and lost just two (to Jelena Janković at the Australian Open and Dinara Safina in Berlin) for the season.