I'm surprised there wasn't a thread for this promising Romanian, so I made one. Here it is:
Date of Birth: 26/08/1990
Birthplace: Bucharest, Romania
Residence: Bucharest, Romania
Current Singles Rank: 228(Career-High)
Current Doubles Rank: 358(Career-High)
Poor Irina, at the end she was so exhausted that she could hardly enjoy her win - or believe that it was indeed over. She did great. Congratulations and good luck for the next!
Now plays Sharapova, who she's 0-1 against, but that was on clay, arguably Maria's best surface. Still Maria is the heavy favorite. However, still will be rooting for Irina!
Irina won the doubles as well, 6-4 6-4.
Now on to the big one - any thoughts on today's match with Sharapova? What do you think the odds are? She seemed reserved in that interview as regards her chances, but I'm sensing a big opportunity here
I don't know. Maria seems pretty much in form this time, so it would prolly take a small miracle to pull this through (Maria having an off day meeting with Irina having one of her best).
Hope Irina won't let herself get intimidated by that long limbed stork. She'll need to serve well too, it's important to hold your serve and try to stay close... if she goes down a break early in sets, it's really hard to recover.
Anyway I'm not focused on the result, just want her to play the best she can
Yeah it might seem a bit far-fetched to imagine she could win this, but stranger things have happened, and this is Wimbledon after all.
In the third quarter, all were projecting a Halep-Kuznetsova R3 and we have a Moni- Kr. Pliskova instead, so why not.
Irina needs to belive she can do it.
I think she's putting up a good fight. Even if she doesn't win this, she's alrwady giving Maria more trouble than she's had in any of her previous matches where she only lost 4 games per whole match on both occasions.