Daily Times

LONDON: World number one and French Open champion Simona Halep was knocked out of Wimbledon on Saturday, losing to Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-Wei 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 in the third round as the All England Club seeds’ carnage claimed another victim. Defeat for Halep means that Karolina Pliskova, at number seven, is the only women’s top 10 seed to reach the fourth round. It also further boosted Serena Williams’s chances of becoming an eight-time Wimbledon champion. Hsieh, the world number 48, battled back from 2-5 down in the final set and saved a match point when the Romanian served for the match at 5-3 in the decider. It will be Hsieh’s first appearance in the last 16 of a Slam where she will face Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia for a place in the quarter-finals. “It’s my first win against a world number one,” said 26-year-old Hsieh. “It’s amazing. I was 2-5 down in the final set but the crowd pushed me to fight.”

Two-time champion Rafael Nadal reached the last 16 for the eighth time and made sure of keeping the world number one ranking. The second seed comfortably defeated Australian teenager Alex De Minaur 6-1, 6-2, 6-4. “It was a positive match against a player with a lot of energy,” said Nadal, the 2008 and 2010 champion. “I am just happy to be in the fourth round again.” Nadal, with Spain out of the World Cup, was heading to watch England play Sweden.

He had obviously captured the national mood. “I’ll go and watch some football – England, it’s coming home or not?” he said in reference to a football song which is currently being sung, hummed and whistled on almost every street and in every pub. Juan Martin del Potro made the last 16 for the first time in five years when the Argentine fifth seed defeated France’s Benoît Paire 6-4, 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.

Other early winners on Saturday included Belgium’s Alison Van Uytvanck who followed her upset of defending champion Garbine Muguruza by beating Anett Kontaveit, the 28th seeded Estonian, 6-2, 6-3. Van Uytvanck will meet fellow last-16 debutant Russian 14th seed Daria Kasatkina, who defeated Ashleigh Barty of Australia 7-5, 6-3.

Published in Daily Times, July 8^th 2018.