Simona Halep gained revenge on Sunday as she defeated the French Open Champion Iga Swiatek with a comeback three-set victory, setting up a blockbuster quarter-final with Serena Williams at the Australian Open.<\/p>\n
The world number two won just three games against the 19-year-old in the first set but turned the tide 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 in an hour and 50 minutes match at the Rod Laver Arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew she would hit strong, but after the first set I tried to make her run and she started to miss,\u201d said Halep, who hit 19 winners.<\/p>\n
Halep\u2019s next challenge is the 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, who she beat the 2019 Wimbledon final.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always tough to think about playing her,\u201d said the world number two. \u201cI will try to enjoy myself and I can only beat Serena if I play my best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier in the game, Halep was aggressive but 15th seed Swiatek exhibited some amazing defensive skills while defending the attacks.<\/p>\n
The Romanian rued squandering two break points in the seventh game and played a loose service game to hand the advantage to a confident Swiatek, who claimed her 21st consecutive set in a Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
However, the 19-year-old\u2019s confidence was dented when she lost her serve in the third set\u2019s opening game with a double fault but fought back to level up.<\/p>\n
She was unable to consolidate, dropping serve to love, as Halep clinched the quarter-final ticket.<\/p>\n
Halep, 29 is seeking a maiden triumph at Melbourne Park having fallen short in a 2018 decider against Caroline Wozniacki.<\/p>\n
Last year, she was stunned after a straight-set loss to Garbine Muguruza in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Simona Halep gained revenge on Sunday as she defeated the French Open Champion Iga Swiatek with a comeback three-set victory,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":37770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[689,1457,1455,269,1419,202],"class_list":["post-17022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-garbine-muguruza","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-serena-williams","tag-simona-halep","tag-tennis"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}