Total Media News

     Simona Halep became the first player into the semifinals of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix after a hard-fought win over Sara Errani on Friday afternoon.

     In a match where both players struggled to hold onto their serve, it was Halep that maintained her composure at the death, adding the coup de grâce to her 6-4, 6-4 triumph, skipping around her backhand to uncork one final return winner.

Halep went into the contest with a WTA-leading 25 wins to her name in 2015 and she made a bright start in pursuit of number 26, threading a backhand down the line for a 2-0 lead.

Errani, though, loves nothing more than a dogfight and was soon dragging Halep into the trenches. Yet despite breaking the Romanian's serve four times in the opening set, her failure to hold onto her own proved costly.

This pattern continued into the second, before Halep finally punctuated the run of breaks in the seventh game to edge her way into a semifinal meeting with Caroline Wozniacki after she ran out a surprisingly comfortable 6-0, 6-3 winner over Carla Suárez Navarro.

The clay court season is a marathon, not a sprint, and Halep is grateful for the workout provided by Errani and her three set win over Garbiñe Muguruza in the previous round. "I'm happy because I need matches at the beginning of the clay season," Halep said. "So, it was good that I had a tough opponent in the first round who was hitting the ball very strong, and today I had a different one.

"Errani's balls are very heavy to play. She's hitting a little bit higher and you know the balls are jumping a lot and it's difficult to finish the point. She's moving really well and her serve is not that powerful but it's really tough to attack it. But I think I did a great job today with my return and I stayed very close to the baseline, and I just tried to open the court more and to finish the balls, to make winners. I couldn't too many but it was a good match I think."

**  WTA