Simona Halep out of Roland Garros, beaten by Zheng

Simona Halep continued her lackluster season with another poor performance losing to Qinwen Zheng 6-2 2-6 1-6.

The Romanian player played Zheng earlier this year in Melbourne beating her in straight sets but today that was not the case. It certainly looked that way early on in the first set while Zheng struggled to find a rhythm. The Chinese player plays a very aggressively style attacking and going for winners. She hit a few in the opening set but also had 13 unforced errors. Halep posted a 4-4 ratio and that was good enough.

Halep was quite passive in rallies but she upped that aggressiveness in the 2nd set with mixed results. She took a 2-1 lead early on with a break in hand but Zheng battled back immediately after that. She added another break as Halep started rushing and committing errors. Zheng won 5 games in a row to close out the 2nd with 6-2 as Halep posted a 3-13 winner-error ratio and that was simply not good enough.

She took a MTO between sets for an apparent injury as her play did suddenly fall apart but it did not help at all. Continuing where she left off, Zheng took an early break and added another one to finish the match 6-1. Halep had 2 winners in the final set and 10 unforced errors bringing the total tally to 9 and 29 and that was sensationally poor.

It remains to be seen whether there truly was some injury and that's not good with Wimbledon around the corner. Tough season for Halep.