Canadian Open 2022 - Dominant Simona Halep 'lays down mantle' with thrashing of off-key Donna Vekic

Simona Halep needed little more than an hour to complete a straight-sets thrashing of Donna Vekic at the Canadian Open. Halep, a two-time champion of the event, has been in resurgent form in 2022 and was in excellent form virtually from the off in Toronto. Ad The Romanian, seeded 15th, had break points in every one of her opponent's service games, eventually taking a comfortable 6-0, 6-2 victory.

Tennis10 big questions for North American swing and US Open01/08/2022 AT 08:13 Halep secured her first title in two years on the Melbourne hard courts at the start of 2022, and former British number one Annabel Croft believes the rest of the field in Toronto will have taken notice of a dominant performance. «She's certainly laid down the mantle, hasn't she?» Croft said on Amazon Prime. «The way she is moving around the court, she is efficient and just so clinical with the ball-striking as we often see.

»Her movement was spectacular. The way she was moving around the court, keeping Vekic on the run, [she was able to] keep that ball out of position for Vekic to use her power from the back of the court." It did not take the former top-ranked player long to settle into her work, holding in relative comfort before capitalising on a succession of errors from Vekic to break in the Croatian player's first service game. It proved the theme of the opening set, Halep breaking her error-prone opponent twice more to tie up a 1-0 report without undue fuss in just 21 minutes.