So serious Simona
With all due respect to Simona Halep, she is not what you might call a smiley person. Not on court at any rate.
The world No.1 is a ferocious battler, a fearsome foe. She does not do smiles and giggles in the heat of battle (which probably explains why she sits proudly at the top of the rankings pile). But away from the court – that is a different matter entirely, especially after her stay in Paris last month.
It was there that Halep beamed from ear to ear as she held the Roland-Garros trophy aloft (although she did need a few pointers from Sloane Stephens, the US Open champion and the beaten Paris finalist, on what to do with the large and heavy cup during the presentation ceremony). And she has not stopped smiling since.
At last, after three previous runner-up spots, she was a Grand Slam champion. At last, the weight of expectation had been lifted from her shoulders and it felt great. No wonder she was smiling.
She was smiling again after she reached the second round with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Kurumi Nara.
But after waiting for so long and battling so hard to get her reward, Halep knows only too well how hard it is to win a major title. She knows the sheer hard graft that goes into it and the heartbreak of just missing out. So, after a few days off to enjoy her win, she knew that she had to reset her targets and start again at square one if she was to get any joy in SW19.
So it was that she took to Centre Court for her first match since winning at Roland-Garros and took on Nara, the world No.100 from Japan. The smile had gone, the game face had replaced it. Halep meant business.
Slightly alarmingly, so did Nara. The two had met in Indian Wells four years ago and Halep had whistled through the encounter for the loss of only four games. In the first round of Wimbledon, Nara was not winning but she was putting up a much better fight.
“Definitely it was a big challenge for me to come here and win the first round,” Halep said. “It is not easy after winning a Grand Slam, to be honest. But I was confident. I knew that it was going to be a tough match. I played against her a few years ago and I knew that she is very fast and she is playing flat so I wanted to be strong on my legs and just enjoying the beautiful court.
“I have no expectations because on grass it’s really tough and every match can go either way. I just want to focus on myself and try to be as good as possible during the match, not thinking about the result and just taking the chance.”
Neither woman would regard grass as their surface of choice, both preferring to work from the baseline and manoeuvre their prey into positions of weakness. So when they tried this on the green stuff, it was a bit like watching two mirror images trying to find a way to dare to be different.
But the difference of 99 ranking places told in the end. Nara was Halep’s Mini-Me and the Roland-Garros champion did everything the Japanese did but did it better. After 78 minutes it was all over and it was time for Halep to start smiling again.
