Sorana Cirstea took advantage of fourth seed Karolina Pliskova‘s bad serving day to make the quarterfinals of the China Open in Beijing, 6-1 7-5.
The world No.44 Cirstea won 69% of the points off of her first serve, compared to Pliskova’s 50% out of just 44% first serves that she got in. Even though Cirstea recorded a breadstick in the first set and won five games in a row to finish the match, the match was not that straightforward, as the Romanian faced eleven break points, but what made the major difference is that she saved eight of those, while Pliskova fought off just one out of seven break points.
Five of those break points that Cirstea faced were at the very opening of the match, when she finally succumbed to the former world No.1 Czech, whose advantage was short-lived as her three double faults in the following game evened the score to 1-1, which turned out to be the start of Cirstea’s dominance.
Pliskova opened the second set by finally managing to hold serve and even progressed to a 5-2 40-0 lead, however, Cirstea succeeded in holding serve in that game and saved the fourth set point on Pliskova’s serve in the following game to eventually pull off a straight-set victory.
In the quarterfinals, Cirstea will play ninth seed Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, whose third-round opponent Peng Shuai retired due to injury after just three games played.
Sorana is really playing well this year. I hope she continues her momentum. I know she can go far in China Open.