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Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, WTA's 4th, on Wednesday advanced to the women's singles semifinals of the French Open 2017 tournament, the second Grand Slam of the year, after a sensational comeback in the quarter-finals to defeat Ukrainian Elina Svitolina 3-6 7-6 (6) 6-0.
Halep, 3rd seeded, came back from 1-5 in the second set, saved a match point in the tiebreaker and clearly dominated the decisive set, thus advancing to her second French Open semifinal, after in 2014 she lost the final to Maria Sharapova. This is Halep's forth Grand Slam semifinal, with the other two in 2014 at Wimbledon and in 2015 in the US Open.
In two hours and 6 minutes Halep scored two aces, double faulted three times and had 26 winning balls and made 27 errors. Svitolina scored one ace, double faulted two times and managed 36 winners, but she also made 45 errors. For her performance so far, Halep has won 530,000 euros and 780 WTA singles points.
In the semi-finals, Halep will face off 3rd-seeded Karolina Pliskova (Czech Republic), whom she leads 5-1 in the head-to-head count. The first face-off between the two of them took place in 2006, in juniors, in a tournament in Belgium, when Halep defeated Pliskova 7-5 6-4. In 2015 Halep won the final in Dubai 6-4 7-6 (4) and also won in the Indian Wells round of sixteen 6-4, 6-4. Last year Halep beat Pliskova 6-4 7-5 in the quarter-finals in Sydney; afterwards Pliskova defeated Halep a Davis Cup meet 6-7 (4) 6-4 6-2. Their previous play took place in Montreal in 2016 and ended with Simona winning the round of sixteen, 6-3 6-3.
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