US Open: Cirstea into last eight, defeats 15th seed Bencic

Romanian Sorana Cirstea, the No 30 seed, defeated Swiss Belinda Bencic, the No 15 seed, 6-3, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York on Sunday evening.

Cirstea, ranked No 30, will face No 10 seed Karolina Muchova next.

Cirstea is into a Slam quarter-final for the first time since Roland-Garros 2009 – only Mirjana Lucic’s 18 years between the last eight of Wimbledon 1999 and Australian Open 2017 is a longer gap between appearances in the Open Era.

When asked what the secret to her deep run here at the US Open has been, the Romanian revealed that she’s simply been applying herself behind the scenes.

“It’s not a key or a magic. It’s just keep believing and keep putting in the work. I think also mentally I have improved. I’m much calmer on the court.”

Cirstea continued, emphasising how pleased she is with her performance today:

“Yeah, I’m very happy of course with the win. I’m very happy with the way I started the matchtoday. I think I started really strong, and I sent quite a  good message right from the beginning. I have played quite solid beginning to end. I think a few chances escaped my hand in the second, but I was able to refocus straightaway.

“I’m very, very happy with the way I handled mentally the match today and also with the way I have played throughout the whole match.”

In the previous rounds of the Flushing Meadows tournament, the 33-year-old Romanian won against American wildcard Kayla Day (6-2, 6-3), Russian Anna Kalinskaya (6-3, 6-4) and Kazakh Elena Rybakina, the No 4 seed (6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-4).

Bencic, ranked No 13, won against Russian Kamilla Rakhimova (6-2, 6-4), qualifier Yuriko Miyazaki (6-3, 6-3) and Chinese Lin Zhu (7-6 (1), 2-6, 6-3) earlier in the tournament.

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Tennis Majors

New York (Grand Slam), other last 16 results (USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, hard, USD 44.700.000, most recent results first):

• Daria Kasatkina vs. Aryna Sabalenka
• Ons Jabeur vs. Qinwen Zheng
• Madison Keys vs. Jessica Pegula
• Peyton Stearns vs. Marketa Vondrousova
• Iga Swiatek vs. Jelena Ostapenko
• Caroline Wozniacki vs. Coco Gauff: sunday
• Karolina Muchova beat Xinyu Wang: 6-3, 5-7, 6-1