Simona Halep came out firing in her first match of the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by South Carolina Global, getting swift revenge against her US Open conqueror, Flavia Pennetta. Last year, she beat Serena Williams 6-0, 6-2 in the group stages before losing to the American in the final. She just loves competing too much to take the easy way out.
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“Coming into this event, I tried to do everything I could to be healthy and although I didn’t play my best tennis today, sometimes that’s not what matters”, Sharapova said of a match that lasted two hours, 48 minutes with a large portion of games going to deuce.
World number two Halep also showed no signs of the left Achilles tendon injury that forced her to retire at this month’s China Open as she dominated the opening match in Singapore.
“I have learned about how to manage the situation when you play semifinals, and I hope to have many more and to pass that bad feeling”, she said.
That can, of course, prove a disadvantage for Radwanska as she has played an very bad lot of tennis recently, putting a lot of strain on her often troublesome right shoulder in particular.
“Yeah, I’m nervous a little bit, of course, being first seed”.
“Looking back three weeks ago I’m glad I did that (chose to recover and train) and got through it and gave myself a chance to play here”, said Sharapova, who won in front of a marquee audience that included Li Na, Mary Pierce, Arantxa Sanchez and Martina Hingis.
“One match down”, said an emotional Sharapova afterwards. The Romanian maintained great depth on her ground strokes and defended extremely well, leaving her Italian counterpart stuck a good three to four feet behind the baseline for the majority of the rallies in the opening set.
“I have many things that I just want to work again on them, still continue to work”.
“I’m the same Halep, but in the good way. We always have such close matches here”. After reaching her first Grand Slam final, at the French Open, the Czech has mostly fallen back under the radar; she lost in the first round at the U.S. Open and has hardly played since.
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Monday play will see (2) Garbine Muguruza vs. (8) Lucie Safarova, and (4) Petra Kvitova vs. (6) Angie Kerber. “I just opened the court and I tried to finish the point”.
