By Chris Oddo | Friday June 1, 2018
Romania's Mihaela Buzarnescu ended Elina Svitolina's seven-match winning streak and bounced her out of Paris.
Photo Source: Cameron Spencer/Getty
Romania’s Mihaela Buzarnescu has stunned No.4-seeded Elina Svitolina 6-3, 7-5 and reached the second week in Paris on her Roland Garros debut. The 30-year-old World No.33 was ranked 377 a year ago, but has risen up the rankings to achieve her first ever Grand Slam seeding in Paris.
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Buzarnescu had never achieved a Top 10 win prior to 2018 but on Friday she booked the biggest scalp of her career by pushing past one of the favorites to win the tournament. The Romanian cracked 31 winners to just 11 for Svitolina and broke serve five times on ten chances.
Svitolina struggled with her first serve all day, winning only 23 of 49 such points. The Ukrainian fell behind by a break in set one and was broken again while serving at 3-5. Buzarnescu held a 14-3 winner edge in set one.
In the second set Svitolina had break leads of 2-1 and 5-4 but she failed to protect both. She was broken while serving to take the second set and ended up dropping the final three games.
The Ukrainian is the highest seed to fall on the women’s side this far this week.
Buzarnescu had never won a Grand Slam main draw match prior to Roland Garros. She had fallen in qualifying eight times and fell in first-round action at the U.S. Open last year and this year’s Australian Open.
She will face Madison Keys in the round of 16.