Danielle Collins sends Simona Halep packing in Rome

Simona Halep continued to struggle this clay season as her ankle troubled her in her match against Collins which the American won 7-6(1) 6-3.

It was a hell of a first set between Simona Halep and Danielle Collins as we saw pretty much everything. Both of them struggled on their serves because the opponent was just attacking every shorter and weaker ball. Both can hit the ball hard so it created quite a bit of trouble. We saw 6 breaks overall but the most important one came at 6-5.

Halep was up 6-5 and she was serving for the opening set which would have been huge as she was seen clutching her ankle a few times during the match. However, once she lost that serve, she completely shut down during the tiebreak which Collins won with 7-1. It seemed like Halep might take a MTO but she didn't and continued on.

It didn't go well as Collins continued dominating while Halep was unable to produce a good counter. Collins won the first four games of the final set being up 4-0 after which Halep finally stopped the bleeding. Collins secured the huge win with a 6-3 2nd set finish. Not a good match from Halep with the ankle issue there as well.