WHAT HAPPENED: On a cloudless Thursday morning on Court 11, the only Swiss woman left in the singles draw, Belinda Bencic, came from behind to beat Sorana Cirstea of Romania for the first time in her career and advance to the third round of the US Open, 3-6, 7-5, 6-2.
But the road to the third round was not smooth; the reigning Olympic singles gold medalist came one game from elimination.
Cirstea took the first set 6-3, and built a 5-3 lead in the second set and was a game away from reaching Round 3 in her 14th US Open appearance. But Bencic had other plans. The No. 13 seed held serve for 4-5 and converted on her fourth break point opportunity in the following game with a backhand winner down the line. (Notably, Bencic was just 2/10 in break point chances at that stage of the match.)
Bencic subsequently held serve and broke Cirstea again to take the second set, 7-5.
In the third set, Bencic went up 3-1 by converting her fourth break point (of 15) in the match. Leading 5-2 on Cirstea's serve, Bencic raced to a 40-0 lead thanks in part to Cirstea's ninth doublefault of the match. The Romanian would win the next three points but double faulted again at deuce. Bencic shanked her first match point, then hit a forehand winner to earn a second.
Cirstea closed the match by dumping a backhand into the net, and recording her first loss to Bencic in three meetings.
“It was a very tough win,” Bencic admitted. “I felt she was putting me a lot under pressure in the first and the second sets. I was doing a lot of mistakes, especially with my forehand. I told myself I just fight and we see how it goes.
“Playing with [my] back to the wall, it's easier to kind of relax, and say, ‘I try everything and we see’ because you almost lost already. Of course, you are very frustrated about how it's going,” Bencic said. "But in a way, you relax, for sure.”
WHAT IT MEANS: Bencic’s 28 unforced errors and ability to convert just 28 percent of her break point opportunities against Cirstea means that the hard-serving baseliner may have several tough battles ahead if she hopes to match her quarterfinal runs here in 2014 and 2021 or reach the semifinals as she did in 2019 before losing to that year’s eventual champion, Bianca Andreescu of Canada.
MATCH POINT: In the third round, Bencic awaits the winner of an all-Czech battle: No. 22 seed Karolina Pliskova (the 2016 US Open runner-up) vs. Marie Bouzkova.
