Late last week, Istanbul, Turkey hosted a WTA tournament with 235,238 USD in total prize money. Taking part were several top-level players, including Belgiums Elise Mertens, seed no 1, Croatias Petra Martic, seed no 2, and Russias Daria Kasatkina, seed no 4. But the winner was a Romanian, Sorana C\u00eerstea, who was designated Athlete of the Week by Radio Romania International.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Soranas performance in Istanbul was no walk in the park. In the first round, she beat Kateryna Kozlova, of Ukraine, 6-4, 7-6, and in the second she won against Russian Anastasia Potapova, 7-6, 6-4. The quarter-finals brought her face to face to Fiona Ferro of France, who had outplayed the Croatian Petra Martic. Ferro quit for health reasons after losing the first set 6-4 to C\u00eerstea.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In the semis, Sorana defeated another Ukrainian player, Marta Kostyuk, cu 6-4, 6-4. Next came Elise Mertens of Belgium, who lost the final to Sorana 1-6, 6-7, after 1 hour and 40 minutes. The Romanian thus won the tournament without losing a single set.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Sorana C\u00eerstea was born in T\u00e2rgovi\u015fte (southern Romania), on 7 April 1990. She became a professional player in 2006, when she finished 348 in the world standings. She has only won one other WTA tournament in her career, the one in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 2008.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
August 2013 brought her to the highest WTA place in her career – 21. A rather difficult period followed, with physical problems, but Sorana recovered and made a remarkable comeback. Early last week she was no 67 WTA, and the win in Istanbul pushed her up to no 58. (tr. A.M. Popescu<\/em>)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennis player Sorana C\u00eerstea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":121729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40940],"tags":[35965,32577,29393,41768,34663,28939,30285,29867],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-121728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","tag-athlete","tag-carstea","tag-istanbul","tag-player","tag-sorana","tag-tennis","tag-tournament","tag-wta"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n