While Halep fought through adversity over the last two weeks, there’s still one thing she can’t control: What happens on the other side of the net. That’s true for every player, of course, but it’s especially true for her, because she doesn’t have the power to take over a match. When she gets to the later rounds in a tournament, she’s usually facing a bigger, taller, stronger player, and she’s usually at that player’s mercy.
That was the case in Sunday, too. During an on-court visit, Bertens’ coach, Raemon Sluiter, asked her how she thought she had built a lead in the second set. “By taking chances,” Bertens said, so Sluiter told her to keep doing that. While her go-for-broke style worked when she was behind in the score and had nothing to lose, it didn’t work so well once she was up 4-1 and had a lead to protect. Still, Sluiter gave Bertens the green light, because, as he told ESPN’s Pam Shriver, he thought it was important that the strategy come from her.
Bertens and Sluiter were both right. Down break point at 4-4, she hit a service winner, and then a second-serve ace. She won the second-set tiebreaker by hitting hard and deep from the baseline, and she only hit harder and deeper in the third set. While we’ve seen Halep’s confidence slowly grow over the last two weeks (and two months), we saw Bertens’ grow right before our eyes on Sunday. By the third set, she was throwing down bomb serves and belting return winners, and not showing a hint of nerves. She finished the match with an ace.
It was a fitting exclamation point for this statement win—which is really only the latest in a long series of statement wins by the 26-year-old. In the best shape of her life, she has beaten Venus Williams, Karolina Pliskova, Caroline Wozniacki, Elina Svitolina, Petra Kvitova twice, and now the world No. 1, Halep. Known as a clay-court specialist until a few weeks ago, Bertens has now reached the second week at Wimbledon, won her first event on hard-courts, and reached a career-high ranking of No. 13.
“I knew anything is still possible,” Bertens said afterward.
OK, but did she think all of this was possible, in such a short amount of time? And if so, what else does Bertens think is possible? How about a deep run at the US Open? After all, she’s beaten most of the high seeds by now.
On Sunday, Peak Simona turned into Peak Kiki. Now we’ll see how long she can stay on that summit.