Romania’s Simona Halep beats Kuznetsova and goes to the semifinals in Roland Garros

Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, number 4 in WTA ranking, will be playing for a place in the final at Roland Garros, after she beat Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova in the quarter finals on Wednesday, June 4. She won the game in two sets: 6-2, 6-2. The rain in Roland Garros delayed the last two games in the women’s quarter finals of the French Open by more than two hours, prolonging the wait for the Romanian fans who wanted to watch their favorite’s second attempt to get into the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament. Simona Halep showed really good tennis in her quarter final match against Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 2009 winner of the French Open, and controlled the game from the start. She won the break in the very first game of the match and this pretty much set the tone for what happened next. Even if Kuznetsova fought back, she was no match for Halep, who managed to control her emotions better than in her quarter final match at the Australian Open and won the key points of the meeting. Halep conceded no game yet in this year’s edition of Roland Garros, a performance she wouldn’t have dreamed of one year ago, when she was eliminated in the first round of the competition. In the semifinals, on Thursday, she is to meet German player Andrea Petkovic, who defeated Italy’s Sara Errani, also in two sets (6-2, 6-2). The two players met last year in the final of the Nurnberg tournament, when Halep beat Petkovic 6-3, 6-3. Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com