Romanian tennis player, Simona Halep, 1st WTA, has defeated Elise Mertens (Belgium, 16th WTA) on Monday 6-2, 6-1, to reach the quarter-finals of the French Open.
The Romanian was on song for the duration of 59 minutes of play on Court Philippe Chatrier, breaking Mertens six times, hitting 16 winners and landing 75% of her first serves for the match to reach the quarterfinals for the third time in the past five years, wtatennis.com informs.
A lengthy, six-deuce third game of the opening set on Mertens’ serve helped Halep secure the first break of the match, and a lead she would never relinquish over the course of two sets.
The World No.1 ran off eight straight games in the middle of the match, and never faced break point until she served for the bagel in the second set.
Though the Belgian delivered one of her best games of the match to get on the board and seal her first break, she was unable to shake the inconsistency which plagued her for the match and extend the match it longer.
Mertens struck 22 unforced errors to just 13 winners in the match overall, and handed Halep the victory with her fourth double fault.
For a place in the semi-finals, Halep will next face the winner of No.7 seed and French No.1 Caroline Garcia and No.12 seed Angelique Kerber.
So far, Halep is to collect 430 WTA points and EUR 380,000.
Irina Bara/Mihaela Buzarnescu also reach quarter-finals
The Romanian pair made up by Irina Bara and Mihaela Buzarnescu has also qualified to the quarter-finals, after defeating on Monday the US pair Jennifer Brady/Vania King 6-4,6-3.
The match lasted one hour and 28 minutes. It is the best performance achieved by both players in their career.
Bara and Buzarnescu will collect 430 WTA points in the doubles and EUR 76,000. In the next round they will face the 8th seeded pair made up by Hao-Ching Chan (Taiwan)/Zhaoxuan Yang (China).