Simona Halep battles past Teichmann in Toronto

Simona Halep played another solid match to defeat last year's Cincinnati finalist Jil Teichmann 6-2 7-5 to move on in Toronto.

Halep arrived in Canada with high hopes and in shaky form. Her Washington outing was anything but impressive as she lost to Kalinskaya but she is looking strong again in Toronto. It's been an interesting match, especially towards the end as the first set was rather simple for Halep.

Teichmann opened by spraying a lot of errors and Halep was able to take an early 3-0 lead. She would hold that lead and add another break at 5-2 to take the first set 6-2. Teichmann was simply all over the place not being able to hit anything into the court. She also served rather poorly and that did not help.

Halep continued playing aggressive tennis but faced much harder opposition from Teichmann. The Swiss player still had her woes as she had to save break points in the first couple of service games. After that, both settled into a nice rhythm and we saw a fairly comfortable match for both. There was no trouble on the serve for either and there was no break points either.

The crucial moment came at 5-5 when Teichmann allowed Halep a couple of break points and she took it 6-5. Then she saved a break point to close out the match 7-5.