IT’S HALEP VS STEPHENS IN FRENCH OPEN FINAL
Top seed thrashes Muguruza to fix final clash with the American who beats Keys
Top seed Simona Halep reached her third French Open final on Thursday with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over former champion Garbine Muguruza. Halep, the runner-up in 2014 and 2017, will face Sloane Stephens in Saturday’s final. Stephens beat Madison Keys 6-4, 6-4.
Her victory over third seed Muguruza also means she will retain the world number one ranking next week. “I am really happy that I won the match, it was very important for my mind and I gave it all I had,” said Romanian star Halep.
After racing through the first set, Halep saved three break points in a marathon ninth game of the second which lasted 13 minutes. “I think I played one of my best matches on clay against a great opponent,” added Halep, who will be appearing in her fourth final at the majors having also been beaten in Australia in January.
“I was 2-4 down in the second set but I knew I had to fight for every ball, push her back and play the way I did in the first set.”
Halep has now defeated Muguruza in both their meetings on clay. However, her sights now turn to the final where she is desperate to erase the memories of last year’s horror show where she surrendered a set and a 3-0 lead to lose to Jelena Ostapenko.
“I have another chance to be in the final and hope to do better than last year.”
Halep raced into a 5-0 lead in the first set against misfiring 2016 champion Muguruza who had blasted Maria Sharapova off court on Wednesday for the loss of just three games.
The 24-year-old Spaniard stopped the rot in the sixth game before Halep quickly reasserted her authority. A sweeping, running forehand into an open court gave her the set.
It was the first set that the Wimbledon champion had dropped at Roland Garros this year. She also failed to win a single service game in the opener.
Nadal enters semis
Rafael Nadal insisted he still “feels pressure” and is “only human”, after battling back from a set down to beat Diego Schwartzman and set up a French Open semi-final clash with Juan Martin del Potro. The 10-time champion was much-improved under the sunshine on Court Philippe Chatrier after finding life difficult the night before, clinching a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory over dogged Argentinian Schwartzman on his fourth match point.
It is the 11th time the 32year-old Spaniard has reached the French Open last four, becoming only the third man in history to achieve the feat at a Grand Slam tournament, after Jimmy Connors at the US Open and Roger Federer at Wimbledon and the Australian Open.
“I don’t have any obligation to win, first thing. Second thing, if you don’t feel the pressure, it’s because you don’t love the sport,” said Nadal, who has never failed to win the title in Paris after reaching the semi-finals.
“Pressure is good. You are able to control that. That pressure, that adrenaline, can be in a positive way.” The 16-time Grand Slam champion was pushed for three hours and 42 minutes by 11th seed Schwartzman, but will face Del Potro for a place in the final after the fifth seed downed Marin Cilic 7
6 (7/5), 5-7, 6-3, 7-5.
When asked why he still felt stress before resuming on Thursday despite all of his past achievements, Nadal said: “[Because] I am a human person.
“Sometimes you play better, sometimes you are more nervous.”
In dropping the opener on Wednesday, Nadal had lost a set at Roland Garros for the first time since a 2015 quarter-final defeat by Novak Djokovic. But he returned 30- 15 up and serving to level the match after fighting back from a break down in the second set between rain delays the previous evening.
It took Nadal just two quickfire points to wrap up the set and leave the two players with effectively a best-ofthree set match to play on Thursday. The top seed would have been delighted to return in his favoured hot conditions after the gloom of the night before, and a hasty end looked in sight when Nadal opened up a 4-1 thirdset lead with a double break courtesy of a booming forehand followed by the cutest of drop shots.
Schwartzman, who came back from two sets down to beat Kevin Anderson in the last 16, rediscovered his form, but it came too late to save the set as Nadal served it out in a marathon eighth game on his second set point after saving four break points. And despite a late stutter as Schwartzman saved three match points, Nadal wrapped up victory to keep alive his hopes of equalling Margaret Court’s record of winning a single Grand Slam singles title 11 times.
Tearful Del Potro
The injury-plagued former US Open champion Del Potro wept courtside after beating third seed Cilic to reach the last four for the second time, but first in nine years. “It’s tough to speak now,” said an emotional Del Potro.
“I’ve been a long time without feeling good with my body. I had surgery three times on my wrist and I was close to quitting this sport. I don’t have words to explain what this means to me and my team.”
The fifth seed has now beaten Cilic, who made 74 unforced errors, eight times in a row, but on Friday he will face arguably the toughest test in tennis against Nadal on Court Philippe Chatrier.
Del Potro, the US Open winner in 2009, is playing the tournament for only the second time since 2012 after a spate of injuries.
The 29-year-old missed the event for four straight years before a third-round loss in 2017, but has regained fitness in recent months and reached the semi-finals at the US Open last year, where he lost to Nadal.