Simona Halep cruised in the opening set but fell apart later to crash out of Roland Garros against Qinwen Zheng 6-2 2-6 1-6.
Qinwen Zheng and Simona Halep played a match in Melbourne earlier this year with the Romanian player easing past the Chinese player who struggled to place the ball in the court. Zheng plays a very aggressive style and she rarely strays away from it. It either works and she wins or she commits dozens of errors and loses. At the start of this match, it was more of the latter.
Halep took an early break and held it for the rest of the set even adding another one, later on, to finish it off with 6-2. She had winners and 4 errors overall with Zheng having 8 winners but also 13 errors. Halep did not want to play passively in this match but she was simply outhit by Zheng who was hitting the ball really hard. Things changed a bit in the 2nd set as Halep upped her game taking an early break 2-1.
Zheng broke back immediately after that and from there on she was able to hold a pretty decent level overall. Halep overhit many times and rushed in rallies especially after falling behind 2-4. Zheng won the 2nd set with 6-2 as Halep sprayed 13 errors overall in the very poor set. Zheng opened the final set with a 3-0 run thanks to some stellar shot-making as Halep continued to struggle.
She took a MTO and won the first game after it but on return, she was still unable to create many chances. Zheng then added another break and finished off the match with 6-1. Another poor performance by Halep with some underlying injury perhaps the culprit as well.
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