WTA Rome: Sorana Cîrstea plays a Grand Slam winner on Friday

Sorana Cîrstea will play on Friday in the second round of the WTA Rome against the athlete Jelena Ostapenko, winner of the Grand Slam (at Roland Garros, in 2017, after a final with Simona Halep).

Sorana Cîrstea vs Jelena Ostapenko, in the second round of WTA Rome

Sorana’s match with Jelena (20th favorite) will be the third of the day at the Grand Stand Arena (could start around 15:00). The tennis day will start at this stadium at 12:00 (Romanian time).

Felix Auger-Aliassime vs Alexei Popyrin and Stan Wawrinka vs Grigor Dimitrov will take place before the match between Cîrstea and Ostapenko.

To know:

• Sorana and Jelena met twice in the WTA circuit, and each time the Latvian won. In 2017 both matches took place: 6-4, 6-4 for Ostapenko at the US Open and also 6-4, 6-4 in Beijing in the quarters.

Thursday was one of the big surprises at the Foro Italico: Aryna Sabalenka (second favorite) and Jessica Pegula (third favorite) were eliminated prematurely – already in the second round of the WTA 1000 category competition.

WTA Rome takes place between May 9-20 on the clay in the Foro Italico complex. It has total prize money worth $3,572,618 and is part of the “WTA 1000” category. The champion of the last two editions is Iga Swiatek. In Romania, the matches on the women’s table can be watched live on Digisport.

• The Italian competition founded in 1930 was won three times by a Romanian athlete: Ilie Năstase, the 1970 and 1973 editions, and Simona Halep, 2020.

• They have also contested finals: Ilie Năstase (1974, defeated by Bjorn Borg), Virginia Ruzici (1978, 1980, 1981) and Simona Halep (2017, 2018, defeated in both cases by Elina Svitolina).