Simona Halep sails past Tamarine Tanasugarn into final eight – Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge 2011
Top seeded Romanian Simona Halep stomped over Thai Tamarine Tanasugarn in straight sets at the Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge 2011, a women’s tournament which is part of the ITF Women’s Circuit held on the hard courts in Dubai, United
Arab Emirates. She registered a 6-4, 6-3 victory over the 34-year-old Thai to secure a quarter-final spot on Wednesday.
A former top forty, Halep showed awe-inspiring skills to trash the Thai, ranked forty-seven levels below her in the Sony Ericsson WTA rankings, on their second meeting. She not only avenged her loss at Guangzhou WTA International
event last year but also advanced into the last eight.
World number 53 Halep lost an early serve in the opening set but bounced back to pull out the victory by winning six games to four. She capitalised on two breakpoint chances to her advantage and dominated in the latter half of
the set.
The seeded Romanian raised the bar of her game in the second set. She breezed through the set to pluck in entire serves and broke the Thai’s serve once to clinch the set with a 6-3 victory. Halep dusted away entire breakpoints
came across and capitalised on one out of many breakpoint opportunities to her advantage.
The highest ranked player of the tournament, Halep proved her class at the Australian Open where she reached the third round before losing to twelfth seed Pole Agnieszka Radwanska. Despite falling to a four match losing streak,
the Romanian cruised to the title-round at Fes WTA International event (lost to Italian Alberta Brianti in the final). She hasn’t had much progress in other WTA tournaments but made it into the last eight at Bucharest ITF Women’s Circuit event.
Next up for the seed is the Belarusian Olga Govortsova who shocked eight seeded Alexandra Cadantu of Romania in straight sets to reach this spot. The Belarusian took almost an hour to sweep past Cadantu with a 6-2, 6-3 score line.
Pole Urszula Radwanska will be joining Halep in the last eight. She upset fourth seeded Romanian Alexandra Dulgheru with a breadstick to reach this spot.
Sister of the world number eight Agnieszka, the 20-year-old Pole barely sweated in the final set to clobber a 6-3, 6-1 success in under an hour.
Ranked 109th in the WTA rankings, Radwanska held entire serves and broke Dulgheru’s serve three times to win convincingly.
She will next face French Kristina Mladenovic who surprised seventh seeded Russian Evgeniya Rodina.
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