Marion Bartoli ousts Simona Halep to book a spot in the fourth round – Sony Ericsson Open 2012
World number fifty, Simona Halep, gave a tough time to the seventh seed French rival, Marion Bartoli, in the third round battle of the Sony Ericsson Open. On Sunday, both players locked horns on the hard courts and after fighting
for two hours and six minutes, the French contestant sneaked a win in straight sets 6-4, 7-6(6).
The opening set was pretty quiet; not much happening was witnessed apart from serve capitalization at both ends. None of the contestants were ready to take risks and try exerting pressure on their counterparts. The scores kept
ticking over for the first nine games and not even a single break opportunity was created.
Finally, the seventh ranked French pumped some energy into the match and grabbed the critical breakthrough that also gave her the set lead in the first half of the match. Halep could only grab a single point on her last serve game
of the opening set and helped her counterpart to sneak her nose ahead in the contest.
Nothing changed in the early moments of the second set. Both players kept on nudging the ball into the gaps created from the lazy movements of their competitors and registered serve holds. The scores ticked over to 2-2.
It was a slight change in the proceedings, with Bartoli being the first to become the victim of a break point in the second set. Halep steered the ball across the court where the French couldn’t reach with her backhand return and
hence went down 3-2. Soon she saw herself two games down to 2-4.
An exchange of breakthroughs kept Bartoli’s chances alive to win the set as she held her serve in the ninth game to manoeuvre the scores at 4-5. A startling display helped her to catch up with her opponent at 5-5 and opened the
set for both contenders.
Both players swapped breakpoints and enforced a tie-breaker. A terrible shot selection from the Romanian forced her to drop points that ended her resistance and gave her opponent a spot in the fourth round draw.
Marion Bartoli goes head-to-head with the Russian tennis ace, Maria Kirilenko, in her next match.
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