Simona Halep needed 97 minutes to get past Elise Mertens in their fourth round match at the 2020 Australian Open while Dominic Thiem routed Gael Monfils to reach his first Australian Open quarterfinal.
Fourth seeded Halep, who had made it to the final of the 2018 edition in Melbourne, won 6-4, 6-4 against the Belgian to advance to the quarterfinals. However, it wasn’t before Mertens fought tooth and nail to take the match into a well-deserved third set.
Mertens had won their previous match at the Doha Open final last year, which was also their only meeting on hard court surfaces. With Haelp’s wins over Mertens having come on clay alone, this was expected to be a tight encounter and it looked like it was headed that way.
[the_ad id=”14063″]
Mertens fell 3-1 down in the first set but rallied to break back and go 4-3 up. She opted to take the aggressive approach in the set, hitting 16 winners and 16 unforced errors to go with it. Halep retaliated with another break of serve, closed out the set and then won three more games in a row in the second set.
Things turned around yet again though as Mertens came back from two breaks down to level the set at 4-4 with the Romanian looking frustrated with herself at that stage.
However, the ninth game of the second set saw Halep earn five break-points and converted the final one to get a decisive break of serve. Leading 5-4, Halep served out for the match to complete the straight-set win.
Also Read:
Halep will now take on the winner of the match between No.28 seed Anett Kontaveit and Poland’s teenger Iga Switek.
Thiem maintained his clean slate against Monfils by registering punishing win over the Frenchman, his sixth in as many matches. Having beaten him at the French Open last year in similar fashion, Thiem was expected to be given a hard fight by Monfils on hard court. However, Thiem simply blew his opponent off the court with a 6-2, 6-4, 6-4 win over the Frenchman.
The Austrian is a two-time French Open finalist but this is just the second time in his career he has made the quarterfinal at a Grand Slam not on clay. His earlier quarterfinal came at 2018 US Open where he went down to Rafael Nadal in a tense five-setter.
As luck would have it, Thiem could face Nadal yet again but for that the Spaniard will need to overcome his arch-rival Nick Kyrgios in a later fourth round match today.
Be the first to comment