Halep reaches semi-finals again in return to Wimbledon

2019 winner wins her 12th straight match at All England Club; Nadal and Kyrgios to meet in men’s semi-finals

Ina roundabout way, Simon a Hale pis finally getting a chance to defend her Wimbledon title.

And she’s picking up right where she left off.

Halep won the title at the grass-court Grand Slam in 2019, but she missed a chance to play as reigning champion in 2020 because the tournament was cancelled amid the corona virus pandemic. She then missed a second chance last year because of an injured left calf.

“That was the perfect match of my life,” Halep said of her straight-set victory over Serena Williams three years ago. “Now I’m playing really well. I’m feeling confident that I feel the game the way I felt back then.”

The 16th-seeded Halep extended her winning streak at the All England Club to 12 matches and reached the semi-finals for the third time by beating Amanda Anisimova 6-2, 6-4 Wednesday on Centre Court.

In the semi-finals on Thursday, again on Centre Court, Halep will face Elena Rybakina in the second match of the day. The 17thseeded Rybakina defeated Ajla Tomljanovic 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 on No. 1 Court in Wednesday’s other quarter-final match.

Third-seeded Ons Jabeur will play Tatjana Maria in the first semi-final match. They advanced by winning their quarter-final matches on Tuesday.

In the men’s quarter-finals, two-time champion Rafael Nadal and Nick Kyrgios both won Wednesday and will play Friday in the semi-finals. Nadal beat Taylor Fritz 3-6, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (10-4) on Centre Court. Kyrgios defeated Cristian Garin 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (5) on No. 1 Court. The other men’s semi-final will be No. 1 Novak Djokovic against No. 9 Cam Norrie.

Nadal, wincing from abdominal pain, unable to ply his customary relentless style of tennis, worried that he might need to stop playing in the quarter-finals against Fritz.

Up in the Centre Court stands, Nadal’s father was waving his arms, motioning to the 22-time Grand Slam champion to quit. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the kid didn’t listen. Nadal stayed out there, adjusted his service motion and his strategy – and figured out a way to win.

With much of the crowd roaring and standing after Nadal’s best strokes, he twice erased one-set deficits against the 11th-seeded Fritz and emerged with a victory in 4 hours 21 minutes to reach his eighth semi-final at the All England Club.

“For a lot of moments,” Nadal said, “I was thinking, Maybe` I will not be able to finish the match.”’

He got to his 38th career major semi-final by denying what would have been a first such appearance for Fritz, a 24-yearold American who defeated Nadal in the final at Indian Wells, Calif., in March. That ended a 20-match winning streak for Nadal, who was bothered that day by a painful rib injury.

This time, the problem was a muscle in his stomach area, which had some athletic tape, as was also the case for Nadal’s fourthround match Monday, when he declined to discuss it. On Wednesday, Nadal left the court with a trainer for a medical timeout while up 4-3 in the second set; Fritz paced around the baseline waiting for action to resume.

When it did, Nadal clearly was compromised. It was hard not to think: Might he give up? Nadal acknowledged that went through his mind. Perhaps that was in Fritz’s, too, because his level of play slipped precipitously for stretches.

Halep is making her 10th appearance at Wimbledon. She is the only Grand Slam champion left in the women’s tournament, winning the French Open in 2018 before taking the title at the All England Club the next year.

“I’m different. I play different. I play well now. All the matches were different than in 2019,” Halep said. “I think every match I got a little bit better. I had tough opponents, and I did what I had to do every day.”

The match against Anisimova appeared to be as straightforward as her first four victories at this year’s tournament – all came in straight sets. But the 20th-seeded American broke Halep when she was serving for the match at 5-2.

Anisimova then had three more break points when Halep again served for the match at 5-4, but the Romanian won five straight points to finish the match.

“I feel like she played without thinking that she has something to lose, so every ball was really hard hit,” Halep said. “But I refused that she’s going to come at 5-all. Even if I was 0-40, I was hard a little bit on myself. I pumped myself. I served very well.”

Halep injured her left calf more than a year ago, forcing her to withdraw from last year’s French Open and Wimbledon. She started working with Patrick Mouratoglou, the former coach of Williams, in April and has now matched her best run at a major since reaching the semi-finals at the 2020 Australian Open.

Next up for the Romanian will be Rybakina, a 23-year-old Kazakh whoi splaying at Wimbledon for only the second time in her career. She lost in the fourth round last year.

Rybakina dropped her first set of the tournament but broke Tomljanovic early in the second and third sets. She finished the match with 15 aces.