A first in the Romanian tennis
The Romanian Simona Halep and the American Serena Williams will play the final of the Wimbledon tournament on Saturday.
Florin Orban, 12.07.2019, 13:50
Simona Halep has qualified to the Wimbledon final, the year’s 3rd Grand Slam tournament. She is the first Romanian player to reach the final of the women’s singles of the biggest world tournament on grass court. Ilie Năstase is the other Romanian tennis player to have reached the Wimbledon final in the men’s singles, but he lost twice: in 1972 to the American Stan Smith and in 1976 to Björn Borg of Sweden.
On Thursday, in the semifinals, Simona Halep defeated the Ukrainian Elina Svitolina 6-1, 6-3. She had a hard time in the first two games but she clearly dominated the match. In the second set, the evolution of the game was balanced up to the score 3-3, after which Halep could not be stopped.
Here she is talking about the match against Svitolina: “It has been an enormous pressure today, because all the matches against Svitolina have always been difficult and she has defeated me several times in the finals. I knew I had to be strong and the fact that I managed to be strong makes me content with my work so far and with the way I have developed professionally. To be honest, I have not dreamt of reaching the final, I have only dreamt of winning each match I have played and I have wanted to play better and better every day. Which has happened and this has given me confidence.”
In the Wimbledon final, Simona Halep will be up against Serena Williams again, whom she has defeated only once so far, with Williams having defeated Halep 9 times up to now. The American player boasts 7 Wimbledon trophies, among other prizes, the first trophy obtained in 2002 and the latest in 2016. In Thursday’s semifinal, Williams defeated the Czech player Barbora Strýcová 6-1, 6-2.
Ahead of her match against Serena Williams, Simona Halep said: “I have not yet thought about how I will be playing. I’ll give it a thought tomorrow. Tonight I’ll think about anything but tennis. I want to enjoy what’s happening, I have nothing to lose, that’s for certain. And I’m telling you this in earnest. I’ll try to play my best and we’ll see what happens.”
Simona Halep is currently on 7th position in the WTA ranking and she was previously world leader for 64 weeks. In her career so far, she has won 18 WTA tournaments of which one Grand Slam tournament last year in Roland Garros. Simona was born on September 27, 1991 in Constanţa and she made her debut in big tennis competitions in 2006, when she played her first matches in the ITF circuit.
In 2010 she entered the Top 100. In August 2014, she climbed on 2nd position in the WTA rankings, which, at the time, was the highest position ever occupied by a Romanian women tennis player. In October 2017 she became world leader, a position which she lost in January 2018. She returned on top position in the same year in February and remained world leader until the beginning of 2019 after the Australian Open. (translation by L. Simion)
