Her Dubai lead gone and later facing match point, Halep topples Jabeur

With her back thrown against the wall on Wednesday, top seed Simona Halep stayed poised to topple Ons Jabeur in her Dubai opener, 1-6, 6-2, 7-6 (7), after two hours.

"The only one thing that you have to do when you don't have rhythm during the match, just put your head down and fight for every ball," said Halep following her well-fought victory. "You never know when you can win an easy ball or a tough ball. What I had to do is just to fight. I'm really proud that I could do that."

In a match that felt like a Fed Cup tie, there was no shortage of support for both players as they were heavily cheered by their respective fans.

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It took Halep longer that she would have liked to find her footing, having dropped the first set in 25 minutes. That was because her opponent took control of the match from the get go, reeling off five straight games to sprint out to a one-set lead.

Not dissuaded by the lop-sided opening set, the steady Halep quickly put that behind her and began to mount her comeback at the start of the second second set, going up 3-0 and 5-1. After giving back one of the breaks back in the seventh game, the Romanian retrieved it right away to drag the match to a decider.

Jabeur was not done yet. Trailing 1-4 in the final set, the Tunisian set to mount her own comeback, winning the next three games to tighten the contest.

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The story didn’t end there. The wild card, who reached her first major quarterfinal at the Australian Open, served for the match at 6-5 and later held match point at 7-6 in the tiebreaker after erasing one of her own. But she tightened up on the forehand side and Halep capitalized to set a quarterfinal clash with seventh seed Aryna Sabalenka.

"After a long period that I didn't play matches, after that semifinal that I lost in Australia, I'm really happy that I could just fight till the end and to turn it around even if I was leading 4-1," said Halep. "I was down in the tiebreak. But it was a good match.

"In the end, I don't know how I could finish that in a right way. But it was up-and-down a lot because she doesn't give rhythm. It was very weird, but happy I could win."

Sabalenka, who defeated doubles partner Elise Mertens, 6-4, 6-3, outclassed Halep last month in Adelaide to win her first match in three meetings with the two-time major champion.