Simona Halep cruises past Alize Cornet in Rome

Simona Halep had a fabulous start to her Rome campaign with a dominant win over Alize Cornet in straight sets 6-4 6-3.

The scoreline is not as dominant as the display one because the Romanian player rushed in quite a few sports, especially in the first set. Halep jumped out to an early lead determined to wash off a disappointing end to her Madrid campaign. Cornet, who beat Halep earlier in the year in Australia, had no response to the immense aggression brought by Halep.

Simona was up 5-1 but then lost her serve once to give Cornet a slight boost. When faced with serving for the set once again, Halep was focused and she closed it out with 6-4. The 2nd set was quite similar as Simona dominated play once more but some poor choices kept the match closer than it should have been. She took an early lead but gave it away. Then she finally broke through properly for the 4-2 advantage.

She went up 5-2 with a double break lead but lost her serve once again. Cornet brought it back to 5-4 and Halep once again finished it off with 6-4. A lot of breaks in the match and despite it being common in Rome, Halep will need to cut that out for the next few matches if she hopes to go far.