Sorana Cirstea Tears Through Toronto to Reach 1st Final in 5 Years #RogersCupTo
She’s been on the radar to some degree for a while now. This year alone, she made the semis at Pattaya and Stanford, the quarterfinals at Birmingham, and the Round of 16 at Charleston and Miami. Now everyone knows her name, but they still can’t pronounce it.
Today, Cirstea (Keer-stay-uh) advanced to her first final in five years in a solid 6-1, 7-6(5) beating of Na Li at Rogers Cup in Toronto. Tomorrow, she’ll face either Agnieszka Radwanska or Serena Williams in her first ever Premier 5 Final.
Cirstea was ranked #26 to begin the week, and will move into the top 20 as a result of trashing the Toronto field. She has torn through Caroline Wozniacki, Jelena Jankovic, Petra Kvitova and Na Li, and that’s just since Monday. If anyone can stop the unstoppable Serena Williams, she has the best chance. Serena does have a 2-0 H2H against Cirstea, with Serena dominating both contests at 2012 Stanford and this year at Roland Garros. That record is a heck of a lot better than Radwanska’s 0-5 H2H against Serena.
Oh, yeah. She is a super-nice person to interview, she jumps out of planes for fun, and you think you can’t spell or pronounce her name? Well, last week she told me that Starbucks is the worst and that she’s just going to tell them her name is Mike or Bob the next time she goes for a latte in the little interview below.
You can call yourself whatever you like if you keep winning like this.
—S. Fogleman
Tennis Atlantic 