WTA Madrid: Simona Halep stumbles to victory, Karolina Pliskova beats Cori Gauff
Simona Halep made it into the second round of the WTA 1000 tournament in Madrid after a difficult win against Sara Sorribes Tormo.Karolina Pliskova also struggled in her opening game, but ultimately won against Cori Gauff in three sets.
by Nikolaus Fink
last edit: Apr 30, 2021, 08:58 pm
It all looked like such a relaxed working day for Simona Halep : The world number three led against wildcard owner Sara Sorribes Tormo easily 6: 0 and 5: 1 and headed towards an extremely easy opening win in Madrid. But suddenly the thread broke with the Romanian, her Spanish opponent was able to equalize to 5: 5. The first step for Sorribes Tormo towards a miraculous comeback had been taken, but Halep knew how to prevent the second. Thanks to two game wins in a row, the 29-year-old bought her second round ticket.
Karolina Pliskova, who was sixth, had to fight even harder. The Czech lost the first round against youngster Cori Gauff, but knew how to turn the game around and prevailed with 5: 7, 6: 3 and 6: 3. She now meets Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, who took Madison Keys out of the tournament in two sets.
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The Russian victory was one of the few surprises on Friday. The seeded players remained completely flawless on the second main draw day: Jennifer Brady (vs. Venus Williams), Victoria Azareka (vs. Ekaterina Alexandrova) and Elise Mertens (vs. Shuai Zhang) all won their first-round encounters.
Naomi Osaka, Aryna Sabalenka and Maria Sakkari had already prevailed in their opening games.
Here the single tableau in Madrid
madridmap