Simona Halep managed to come back from the brink of defeat after she dropped the first set and fell behind with a chance to break in the quarter-finals of the Linz Open season 2021.
Within 2 hours 13 minutes, the second seed had to play extra hard to overthrow seventh seed Jasmine Paolini 4-6, 7-5, 6-0.
With the win, the former world number 1 advances to a third semi-final of the 2021 season which has been quite steep for him after an injury blocked his path. The thing that can motivate him is that he has made it to the second semifinal in a row in recent weeks after he also advanced to the semifinals of the Transylvania Open.
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In his final tournament of the season, the Romanian remains on track to maintain one of his achievements of winning at least one title every season since 2013.
Getting to the semi-finals of this season’s Linz Open was no easy feat for Halep against a Paolini who is in form after he won the first title of his career at Portoroz in September. Since then, the Italian has beaten Elise Mertens at Indian Wells and made her way to the semifinals at Courmayeur, so she is now at the highest ranking of her career to date, world number 51.
After winning the first set, Paolini was unfortunately unable to maintain the momentum in the second, including failing to find a way to break through Halep’s defence.
On the other hand, players who have won two Grand Slam titles are starting to find their rhythm. In the first set, he only managed to hit seven winners, but the number increased to 13 winners in the second set and 12 in the second after he was able to anticipate Paolini’s pattern and was ready to neutralize it before he finally came out victorious.
“I am very relieved that I was able to win this match. It was a very, very tight match. He played so fast, so powerful, and at the start of the game I didn’t have time to do anything on the pitch,” Simona Halep said.
“But then I tried to play a little slice, change the rhythm, then a little bit more aggressive, and in the end I was able to dominate the game.”
Waiting for Halep in the semifinals of the Linz Open is her compatriot, Jaqueline Cristian whom she defeated in the quarter-finals of the Transylvania Open.
In the quarterfinals of the Linz Open, Cristian surprisingly managed to beat the fourth seed, Veronika Kudermetova 6-3, 7-6, including securing three set points in the second set.
While the other two semifinal places were filled by two US players, namely the third seed, Danielle Rose Collins and the eighth seed, Alison Riske.
Collins beat Belgian Alison Van Uytvanck 7-5, 6-3, while Riske beat Wang Xinyu 6-3, 7-5.
