Simona Halep slays Tara Moore in the opening round – Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge 2011
Top seeded Romanian Simona Halep crippled British qualifier Tara Moore with a breadstick at the Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge 2011, an ITF women’s circuit event taking place on the hard courts in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She
barely sweated to formulate a 6-1, 6-4 victory over the 19-year-old British woman and secured a second round place on Tuesday.
World number 53, Halep starlet took under an hour to crush Moore, ranked 266 levels below her in the Sony Ericsson WTA Premier Rankings, on their first encounter. She not only advanced into the round of sixteen but also inched
towards her maiden year-to-date title.
After Moore held her opening serve, Halep went berserk and unleashed barrage of groundstrokes to go on a six games rampage, earning a breadstick in less than half an hour. She dusted away all breakpoints came across and cashed
in two breakpoint chances to her advantage.
The highest ranked player of the tournament kept momentum rolling into the final set. She smoothly bagged entire serves through blistering forehands from her arsenal of skills and broke the qualifier’s serve once to seal the victory
by winning six games to four. Halep defended all breakpoints faced and cashed in one out of many breakpoint opportunities to her advantage to win comfortably.
Halep clobbered a higher first serve share and took full advantage of the several unforced errors and double faults the British woman committed.
A former top forty, Halep had a monotonous season so far. She made a quarter-final showing in the first tournament she participated i.e. at Auckland WTA International event but was ousted from the qualifiers at Hobart WTA event.
The Romanian cruised into the third round of Wimbledon Championships before falling to a four match losing streak. Regardless of a poor run of form, she lifted her game in April where she made a title round berth at Fes WTA International event before losing
to Italian Alberta Brianti. The Romanian then failed to progress in any WTA event but did made a last four appearance at Bucharest ITF before entering this tournament.
Next up for the seed is the Thai Tamarine Tanasugarn who eased through Russian Marta Sirotkina in straight sets to reach this spot.
World number 100, Tanasugarn required almost one and half hour to dump the Russian, ranked 119 places below her, in straight sets. She defended all breakpoints came across through her amazing defensive skills and broke Sirotkina’s
serve five times to seal the deal with a 6-2, 6-3 score line on their first meeting.
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