Romanian Tennis Players Competing in the Australian Open
The Australian Open tennis tournament is the headline-hitting competition these days. So far everyone has been upbeat about Romanias participation in the event.
România Internațional, 22.01.2014, 13:41
The Australian Open tennis tournament is the headline-hitting competition these days. So far everyone has been upbeat about Romania’s participation in the event. Unfortunately, however, on Wednesday the last Romanian player in the seniors women’s singles was taken out of the competition. In the quarterfinals Simona Halep was defeated by Slovakian tennis player Dominika Cibulkova in straight sets, 6-3,6-nil. For her otherwise excellent run in Melbourne, Simona received 270,000 Australian dollars and 430 WTA points. In 2013 Halep won six WTA tournaments and was designated the tennis player with the most spectacular upward trend in women’s professional circuit in 2013. Simona is also the first Romanian tennis player to have reached as far as the Australian Open’s quarterfinals since 1997, when Irina Sparlea was the last Romanian tennis player to have succeeded such a performance.
In this year’s competition, Romania has got only one representative left. In the mixed doubles, the pair made up of Horia Tecau and the Indian Sonia Mirza, the competition’s number 6 seed, have reached as far as the quarterfinals. The two will be fighting their way up to the semifinals, taking on the pair made of the German Julia Goerges and Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi from Pakistan.
Horia Tecau has for quite some time been one of the favorites of the Grand Slam tournaments’ doubles events. In 2013, Tecau won the mixed doubles finals in Melbourne, pairing up with American tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands. In 2010 and 2011 Tecau, playing with Robert Lindstedt from Sweden, lost the men’s doubles finals in Wimbledon.
