All hail Halep
Romanian outclasses Williams to claim her first Wimbledon title
Simona Halep (Romania) beat Serena Williams (US) 6-2, 6-2
Yesterday’s women’s final occupied just 56 minutes. So was this an underwhelming return on tickets that started at £185 per seat? You might think so – but only if you were not there.
In fact, it was a privilege to be on Centre Court to watch Simona Halep – a dedicated and enormously likeable athlete – deliver the performance of her life. In 93 points, she hit only three unforced errors, and you could argue whether the third of those – an unreturned second serve – should even count. It was the cleanest match played in a Wimbledon final since IBM started cataloguing these statistics in 1998.
The scoreline – a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Serena Williams – might make this sound like a forgettable occasion. But the passion of the 15,000 on Centre Court has rarely reached higher levels.
There was a sense of tension throughout – or at least until the moment when Halep broke for a 5-2 second-set lead – because you always felt that Williams might switch to a higher gear. And there was also a newfound affection for Williams, who has not always been fully celebrated here in the past. It was hard to say whether that stemmed from her mixed-doubles partnership with Andy Murray, or the extra warmth that surrounds sporting greats as they enter their final act.
“I definitely felt the support and the love,” said a philosophical Williams at her press conference, when asked about Wimbledon’s veneration for her and her near contemporary Roger Federer. “I appreciated it. I wanted to do better. I don’t think my opponent wanted me to do better today, so...
“But it’s cool. Yeah, no matter which way you look at it, we’re not going to be out here in the next three, four, five years. The time is now to get out there and to watch us play, I guess.”
Another reason for the noisiness of the crowd – who offered a standing ovation at the end – was that this was a primary-colours sort of match-up.
Weight of shot on one side, fleetfooted mobility on the other. Big country versus small. Unabashed celebrity against publicity-shy introvert. It is hard to say how well the Wimbledon faithful know Halep, but they recognised her intensity from the second point of the match, when she whipped a forehand pass across the bows of the onrushing Williams.
The physical contrast and the power imbalance added extra drama to the spectacle. But it was not as if Halep eliminated errors by playing safe, bunting and slicing. She was striking the ball sweetly, not taking the pace off in the way that Barbora Strycova had attempted against Williams in Thursday’s one-sided semi-final.
Instead, Halep ran from corner to corner like some tennis version of Forrest Gump. Early in the third game, Williams put three successive shots within a couple of feet of the sidelines – alternating from the right of the court to the left and then back to the right again. Halep was in the tramlines when she hit each reply, but she still finished the point off with a perfectly angled backhand winner.
“I’m very sure that was the best match of my life,” said Halep, a 27-yearold from Constanta who thus became the first Romanian to win Wimbledon.
“I knew that I have to be aggressive, being 100 per cent for every ball, that I don’t have to let her come back to the match because she is so powerful and so strong.”
This was Halep’s second major, after she won last year’s French Open, and it