Sometimes the way to turn a match around is very simple, at least according to Simona Halep.

“I knew I had to change my tactics,” Halep said after her whiplash-inducing 0-6, 6-3, 6-1 win over Rogers Cup defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska on Friday in Toronto. “So I just kept the ball inside the court and made more rallies out there.”

Keeping the ball inside the court: That’s usually a good place to start.

Halep did that, and eventually much more, as she backed up one grueling three-set win, over Angelique Kerber on Thursday, with another less than 24 hours later.

“At the beginning I couldn’t move my legs,” Halep said after beating Radwanska for her 300th career win. By the end, she had reached her first semifinal since May, in what has also been a whiplash-inducing season for her.

As her erratic 2015 record attests, it hasn’t always been easy for the 23-year-old Romanian to know how to approach her game or her career. As late as 2013, despite winning six titles that year, Halep was a virtual unknown, with a ranking that hovered in the 50s. But after reaching the final of the French Open and the semis at Wimbledon the following year, and bageling Serena Williams in a set, she had vaulted out of the WTA pack, out of anonymity, all the way up to No. 2 in the world.

“She went through changes this year as a person,” her former coach, Wim Fissette, told the Romania Journal late in 2014. “At the beginning of the season she was a shy girl, but at the end of the year she was a world star.”

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Learning on the Run

Learning on the Run

Halep has spent 2015 learning the ropes of stardom, and discovering that the next step—to win a Grand Slam, to hold onto a No. 2 ranking, to keep her place at the top of the pecking order—is the hardest of all. She has spent this year searching, with varying degrees of success, for the best way to handle new expectations and newfound fame. For someone who may have lived the first 21 years of her life never expecting to be where she is at 23, breathing the rarefied air at the top of the game hasn’t been easy.

Last November, Halep split with Fissette in favor of a fellow Romanian, Victor Ionita. By June, she had split with Ionita. At the Australian Open, she threw in the towel in her quarterfinal against Ekaterina Makarova, then vowed never to go down without a fight again. That attitude helped earn her the biggest title of her career, in Indian Wells, a month later.

Like clockwork, though, the expectations returned. Halep was suddenly the new Justine Henin, the new rival to Serena, the next No. 1, a sure Grand Slam winner. And, like clockwork, her game suffered. Halep lost in the second round at the French Open and the first round at Wimbledon. When adversity struck, and things didn’t go her way, she was unable to slow down and find a way to turn the momentum back in her favor. At times she seemed to rush herself, willfully, toward defeat.

Halep talked about being “more stressed.” She talked about the “emotion not being there 100 percent.” She talked about a crisis of confidence. She talked about dealing with a death in her family. She talked about trying, and failing, to go back in time and “play without pressure.” She talked about her home country, that it’s “difficult to go there now,” and that “now I’m used to hearing bad things about me in Romania.” The only thing she was positive of after Wimbledon was that she needed a vacation. “For sure I will get it,” she said.

Halep, who did spent her time off in Romania with her family, is back from vacation now, and so far it seems to have done her a world of good. Gone, for the moment, is the idea that she can ignore the expectations, ignore her new status, and play without stress. You can manage pressure, but you can never eliminate it.

Early in the week, Halep talked about how people are “searching what you do on court, what you do off court,” but that she was used to the scrutiny and the negativity now. And while Halep may not love what people back home say about her when she loses, she’s happy that her fellow Romanians come out in droves to watch her play. All week, the country's flag has flown in Toronto, and cries of “See-moan-ah!” have echoed through the grounds.

“It’s amazing to have such support wherever you go,” said Halep, who may have the most vocal following in the sport.

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Learning on the Run

Learning on the Run

Still, at 5’6”, without an overpowering serve or ground-stroke weapon, Halep must earn every point she wins, and she has certainly earned them this week. Her three-set, two-and-a-half hour victory over Kerber was the best women’s match so far in Toronto. The two women pushed each other from corner to corner, but neither could get the ball past the other. By the end, Kerber was playing in a perpetual grimace, and Halep was bent double and breathing heavily between each rally. But while Kerber, who won last week in Stanford, was the one who came in with momentum, it was Halep who left with it.

“I’m really happy that I could win this match,” Halep said afterward. “I was fighting till the end, and I think that I found a way to win the tough matches.”

Halep won with her legs; few players are more mobile. But where she had an advantage over Kerber was in her shotmaking; few players change the direction of the ball more naturally and effortlessly than she does.

And while she said she turned things around against Radwanska by keeping “the ball inside the court,” Halep really did it by turning the match into an athletic contest. She opened up the points with angles, and used her speed and versatility to prevail in the long rallies.

“I feel pain everywhere in my legs,” Halep said with a smile on Friday. She’s sure to feel more of it in her semifinal against Sara Errani today.

Beating the best players, staying at the top of the game, dealing with the pressure of stardom: None of it may ever be easy for Simona Halep. It may always involve a struggle that pushes this shy girl to her limits, physically and mentally. And understanding that may be the most valuable thing she'll learn this season.