Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, world number one, qualified on Friday evening for the semifinals of the WTA tournament in Rome (Internationali BNL d’Italia), with prizes worth 3,351,729 US dollars, after defeating French Caroline Garcia, with a score of 6-2, 6-3.
Halep (aged 26), last year’s finalist at Foro Italico, defeated her opponent (aged 24, WTA’s 7th) in one hour and 14 minutes.
Simona Halep, who stays at the top ranking for at least one more week and who will be the main seed at Roland Garros, secured a cheque worth 126,590 euro and 350 WTA points. In the semifinals, Halep will face off Maria Sharapova of Russia.
Sharapova (aged 31, WTA’s 40th) leads the head-to-head against Halep 7-1, but the Romanian tennis player won their most recent event, in 2017, in the round of sixteen in Beijing, with a score of 6-2, 6-2.
On Friday, Sharapova defeated Latvian Jelena Ostapenko, 6-7(6), 6-4, 7-5, after three hours and 11 minutes.