Sorana Cirstea continued her remarkable form in the twilight of her career as she thrashed Solana Sierra 6-0 6-0 to reach the French Open fourth round.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old is the oldest player in the Open era to claim a ‘double bagel’ victory in a Grand Slam main draw.<\/p>\n
The win over Argentina’s Sierra sees Cirstea become the oldest player to reach the last-16 in the women’s singles at Roland Garros since Serena Williams in 2021.<\/p>\n
Romania’s Cirstea will retire at the end of 2026 but is enjoying one of the best spells of her 20-year career.<\/p>\n
This is the first time Cirstea has advanced beyond the second round of a Grand Slam since the 2022 US Open.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month she reached the Italian Open semi-finals, beating world number one Aryna Sabalenka along the way.<\/p>\n
Cirstea was dominant from start to finish, with her 21-year-old opponent not reaching game point once in the match.<\/p>\n
“I don’t feel I’m doing anything different. I feel I am still working the same – the same discipline and professionalism,” Cirstea said.<\/p>\n
“Every time I step on court I feel I have a lot of things to improve. I have goals I want to improve and that keeps me alive. <\/p>\n
“I’ve always been there the last couple of years around [world number] 20, but I feel what’s different this season is the consistency.”<\/p>\n
Cirstea will face China’s Wang Xiyu next. Should she advance, she will reach the quarter-finals at Roland Garros for the first time in 17 years and equal her best run at a Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
Her previous major quarter-final appearance came at the US Open in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sorana Cirstea continued her remarkable form in the twilight of her career as she thrashed Solana Sierra 6-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-611217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}