Carla Suarez Navarro upsets Simona Halep in the quarter-finals – Barcelona Ladies Open 2012
Spanish tennis icon, Carla Suarez Navarro, registered an upset on Friday. She defeated the 46th ranked Romanian, Simona Halep, in the quarter-final of the Barcelona Ladies Open in straight sets 6-4, 6-1.
It was a stunning result for the home crowd. Everyone in the arena was thrilled at such a promising performance from the 23-years-old Spaniard who had been under some sort of criticism in recent times. She took just an hour and
13 minutes to drown her rival and become the first player to confirm a spot in the last four.
Both players swapped breakpoints at the start before the visitor registered the first serve hold of the match. There was no serve hold witnessed for the following four games that further pushed the scores to 3-4 in favour of the
Romanian. However, the local players fought back and registered a serve hold to level the scores at 4-4. She stunned her opponent with a breakthrough in the following game and won the following four points to take the first set.
The 20-year-old Romanian was under the cosh in the second set and lost the opening game. She couldn’t win a single point in the following two games that thumped her back to a trail of 0-3. Navarro continued to exert pressure and
cruised away to a lead of 4-0.
It was getting pretty ominous for the Romanian who lost yet another breakpoint in the fifth game. Navarro was broken in the sixth game that denied her of a bagel but she didn’t take longer to finish off the match in her favour.
Everyone in the arena stood up to give a huge round of applause to their supreme tennis ace. Navarro replied them with a wave and left the arena after giving several autographs to her fan. She will come back to the red clay court
of Barcelona on Saturday to take on the winner of the match between the second seed German, Julia Goerges, and the seventh seed Israeli starlet, Sara Errani. It will be an enthralling battle, no matter whoever wins the all-seeded quarter-final battle later.
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