Top seed Simona Halep extracted brutal revenge on American teenager Amanda Anisimova with a 6-0, 6-1 victory to move into the fourth round of the French Open on Friday.
Anisimova caused a huge upset last year when she comfortably beat the Romanian, then the defending champion, in the quarterfinals, but could not reproduce that form as she received a 54-minute claycourt lesson.
Miserly mood
Halep was in typically miserly mood on Court Philippe Chatrier, giving precious little away and waiting for the 19-year-old Anisimova to make mistakes.
She pocketed the opening set in 23 minutes and although 25th seed Anisimova, who had dropped only four games in her first two matches, briefly threatened a revival at the start of the second set Halep raced away to victory.
Halep will face another rising star in the next round when she plays Poland’s Iga Swiatek in a repeat of their fourth-round clash last year in which Halep dropped only one game.
Mertens crashes out
The event came alive as home hope Caroline Garcia battled back to beat 16th seed Elise Mertens 1-6, 6-4 7-5 in a third-round thriller
Earlier, Ukrainian third seed Elina Svitolina advanced with a no-nonsense 6-4, 7-5 victory against Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova.
In the men’s section, third seed Dominic Thiem was not at his best but still had enough firepower to see off the challenge from Norway’s Casper Ruud with a 6-4, 6-3, 6-1 win to march into the fourth round.
Later, American qualifier Sebastian Korda who beat Pedro Martinez 6-4, 6-3, 6-1, became the first qualifier to reach the second week in nine years and first man outside the top 200 to make the pre-quarterfinals here since local player Arnaud di Pasquale in 2002.
