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Romanian tennis player Sorana Cirstea on Wednesday advanced to the women's singles semi-finals of the Miami Open WTA 1,000 tournament, prize pool 8.8 million US dollars, after defeating Belarusian Arina Sabalenka, world number two, 6-4 6-4.
Cirstea, 32, world number 74, achieved a spectacular victory, the most important in her career, in an hour and 25 minutes, told Agerpres.
This is Cirstea's second semi-final of a WTA 1,000 tournament after ten years ago (2013) she reached the final of the Canadian Open.
An Indian Wells quarterfinalist, Cîrstea prevailed over the Australian Open champion in two sets, which she controlled for most of the time. She started with a break, but was tied, 4-4, to immediately win again against the serve, and then prevail 6-4 in the first set. Cirstea started with a break the second set as well, got to 2-0, but then lost three consecutive games. At 3-3, Sorana managed a new break and won the set 6-4.
Each player managed seven aces, with Cirstea making two double faults, and Sabalenka six.
This was the first meet between the two, with Sabalenka coming off the back of 20 wins in 22 matches in 2023. At the Miami Open, Cirstea has not lost a set so far, knocking out Fernanda Contreras Gomez (Mexico), Caroline Garcia (France, world number four), Karolina Muchova (Czech Republic), Marketa Vondrousova (Czech Republic) and Arina Sabalenka (Belarus, world number two).
For her performance, Cirstea won 352,635 US dollars and 390 WTA singles points, and in the semi-finals she will play the winner between Czech Petra Kvitova and Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova.
