When Sorana Cirstea defeated Sabine Lisicki to win the Tashkent Open 17 years ago, consider this snapshot in time:<\/p>\n
“High School Musical 3: Senior Year” was a couple of weeks away from release.
\nThe Detroit Shock, since relocated twice, had just secured their third WNBA title.
\nCoco Gauff, now a two-time Grand Slam champion, was 4 years old.<\/p>\n
That was the last time Cirstea won a singles title on a hard court \u2014 a drought that ended Saturday when she defeated Ann Li 6-2, 6-4 to claim the Tennis in the Land powered by Rocket title in Cleveland.<\/p>\n
It is Cirstea\u2019s third career Hologic WTA Tour singles title and her first since 2021. Earlier this year, she also won a WTA 1000 doubles title in Madrid with Anna Kalinskaya.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a wonderful week,\u201d Cirstea said after the match. \u201cFrom the first match of qualies, I felt the energy, I felt welcome, and I really loved the city and the vibe. You could see on the court how relaxed and how much I was enjoying (myself). I really wanted to stay as long as possible here, so I\u2019m very happy that I managed to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cirstea’s path for the title stretched longer than most. Ranked No. 112 in the PIF WTA Rankings entering the week, she had to advance through qualifying to reach the main draw.<\/p>\n
By week’s end, she had picked up five Top 100 victories, including a straight sets win over No. 19 Liudmila Samsonova in the quarterfinals. Entering the final, Cirstea had not dropped a set in six matches between qualifying and the main draw \u2014 a streak she extended against Li.<\/p>\n
The Romanian earned the first break of serve at 2-2 in the opening set and converted on her first opportunity of the match. Li had a chance to break back in the next game but failed to convert.<\/p>\n
Cirstea faced only two more break points the rest of the way, the last while serving for the match in the second set.<\/p>\n
But Cirstea felt no pressure, and it showed as she closed out the victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a special week for me,\u201d Cirstea said. \u201cI really just came here to play some matches with absolutely zero expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following her run to the title, Cirstea now faces a short turnaround ahead of the US Open, as does Li. Both players will have a couple of days off before their first-round matches in New York.<\/p>\n
Li plays Rebecca Sramkova on Monday, while Cirstea will face Argentina\u2019s Solana Sierra on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Danilina, Krunic win doubles title<\/p>\n
In a final between the top two seeds, No. 1 seeds Anna Danilina and Aleksandra Krunic defeated No. 2 seeds Chan Hao-ching and Jiang Xinyu 7-6 (3), 6-4 to win the doubles title in Cleveland.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first title together for the reigning French Open finalists.<\/p>\n
For Danilina, it\u2019s her 11th career WTA doubles title and second of the season. Krunic also secured her second title of the year and now has eight career doubles titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Sorana Cirstea defeated Sabine Lisicki to win the Tashkent Open 17 years ago, consider this snapshot in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-88957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88957","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=88957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}