RRI Sports Club

Florin Orban, 19.09.2018, 11:56

Romanian tennis is faced with a paradoxical situation: while women’s
tennis is thriving, men’s tennis is close to its all time low.

The latter fact was demonstrated last weekend by the Davis Cup
matches. Romania faced Poland in Cluj to advance to the Europe/Africa Zone
Group I from which Romania was relegated last year. Romania lost to Poland 2-3.
On Saturday, the first day of the tie, Marius Copil defeated Kamil Majchrzak
6-2, 6-4, while the Polish player Hubert Hurkacz defeated Adrian Ungur 7-6,
7-5. On Sunday, the Romanian pair Florin Mergea and Horia Tecau defeated the
Polish pair Lukasz Kubot and Marcin Matkowski 7-5, 4-6, 6-3. Romania then went
on to lose the following two singles matches, with Marius Copil losing to
Hubert Hurkacz 6-3, 6-4 and Adrian Ungur to Kamil Majchrzak 6-3, 6-2.

The match in Cluj was the last one for Adrian Ungur, who has decided
to retire. In recent years, he has been plagued by health problems related to a
herniated disc. He had fallen to the 678th place in the world
ranking and had only played two matches in the last year before the Poland
matches. He’d won one Davis Cup match against Morocco in April against Lamine
Ouahad and another one last month in a futures tournament in Bucharest against
Mihnea Turcu, before withdrawing from the competition. Aged 33, Adrian Ungur
achieved his highest ATP ranking in June 2012, when he reached no. 79.

In women’s tennis, on the other hand, Romania has six players in the
top 100: Simona Halep, who is no. one in the world, Mihaela Buzarnescu at no.
23, Sorana Cirstea at no. 52, Irina Begu at no. 55, Ana Bogdan at no. 80 and
Monica Niculescu at no. 81. According to statistics published by WTA Insider,
Simona Halep had the largest number of wins in the WTA circuit this year by the
10th of September. She won 46 matches, just as many as the Czech
player Petra Kvitova, but the latter has three defeats more than Halep. Mihaela
Buzarnescu is in the 9th place in terms of number of matches won,
with 36 wins. Another interesting fact is that Halep played the least number of
tournaments of the players in the top 15. She has won three titles this year,
in Shenzhen, Roland Garros and Montreal, and lost the finals at the Australian
Open, Rome and Cincinnati.