Stephens and Halep Move Into Miami Quarterfinals

Simona Halep booked the eighth and final quarterfinal spot at the Miami Open on Monday, beating Italian Flavia Pennetta 6-3, 7-5 to reach the tournament’s final eight. The Romanian exercised some demons as she had never beaten Pennetta in any of the pair’s three previous meetings.

However, those three matches came back in 2013 when Halep was still making her way up the WTA ladder. The world number three was able to snatch the lone break of the opening set, which was all she needed to take the one-set advantage.

In the second, Pennetta turned things on. She was able to start winning points on Halep’s serve and opened up a 5-2 advantage in the set.

Halep put together a remarkable run from there, however, and rallied back to take the set 7-5, at one point winning 10 points in a row to take it in straight sets.

“It was a very tough match. She’s a great player,” said Halep. “In the second set, I was down 5-2, and was playing badly, so I knew I just had to cool down and start playing more aggressively and hit the ball deeper. I did that when I went back on the court. I tried everything and finally I was able to win.”

Halep’s groundstrokes were excellent as she won more than half of the points on Pennetta’s serve, capped off by five break points.

This is already the fifth quarterfinal of the season for Halep, who has won three titles in 2015. She draws a matchup with American Sloane Stephens in the final eight, as Stephens moved past Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic with a 6-4, 7-6(5) win on Monday. She put together a comeback of her own in the second set, coming back from 3-5 down to win the frame in a tiebreak and capture the straight-set win.

“I thought both of us played really well off the ground,” said Stephens. “She’s a really great player, so it was going to be tough for me, but I thought overall we both played a really great match.”

Halep and Stephens have met four times previously, with each player coming away with two victories.

In the biggest upset of the day on the women’s side, unseeded German Andrea Petkovic ousted ninth-seed Ekaterina Makarova of Russia 6-1, 7-5.

Petkovic dominated the first set only to see a 5-3 lead in the second set get drawn to 5-5. She regrouped, and won the final two games of the set to beat Makarova in straight sets.

“I played one of the best sets I’ve ever played in the first set today,” said Petkovic. “She’s such a great player, though, and it was clear she was going to come back in the second set. I’m lucky I was able to play well at the end and get away with it, and win the match in straight sets.”

Petkovic will play 14th seed Karolina Pliskova in the quarterfinals. Pliskova tied Halep for most match-wins on the tour this season on Monday with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Daria Gavrilova.

The two have split the previous two meetings in which they’ve played.

The other quarterfinals in Miami were settled earlier in the day and will feature the 16th-seeded Venus Williams against the 12th-seeded Carla Suarez-Navarro and 27th-seeded Sabine Lisicki against the top-seeded Serena Williams.