It will be a battle of the 20-year-olds in the Indian Wells Masters final after Japanese sensation Naomi Osaka crushed world number one Simona Halep in straight sets.<\/p>\n
Simona Halep was the overwhelming favourite but the three-time grand slam finalist was outclassed by hard-hitting Osaka 6-3 6-0 on Friday.<\/p>\n
Naomi Osaka \u2013 who eliminated five-time major winner Maria Sharapova in the opening round \u2013 was not overawed against an error-prone Halep as she reached her maiden Premier Mandatory decider after just over an hour on court.<\/p>\n
The shock victory set up a meeting with fellow 20-year-old Daria Kasatkina following the Russian\u2019s win over Venus Williams.<\/p>\n
Simona Halep and Naomi Osaka met at the Australian Open in Melbourne, where Halep improved to 3-0 against Osaka thanks to a straight-sets win at Melbourne Park in January.<\/p>\n
But it was not as straightforward for Halep \u2013 who had not faced a seeded player heading into the semis \u2013 on Friday as Osaka\u2019s brute power proved troublesome for the Romanian star.<\/p>\n
Osaka stormed out of the blocks in the opening set, breaking in the second game for a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Halep, who only won 33 per cent of her second serves in the first set, slowly found her rhythm \u2013 hitting some impressive winners to level the contest at 2-2 and 3-3.<\/p>\n
But it was nothing compared to Osaka, who continued to respond to everything thrown at her as she broke again for a 5-3 advantage before serving out the set.<\/p>\n
It was a similar story in the second set, Osaka \u2013 like she did in the first \u2013 getting on top early, going up a double-break against a clearly unsettled Halep.<\/p>\n
Halep continued to record unforced errors \u2013 27 in total while she only converted one of seven break points \u2013 as the Australian Open runner-up bowed out with a second-set bagel, despite saving two match points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It will be a battle of the 20-year-olds in the Indian Wells Masters final after Japanese sensation Naomi Osaka crushed world number one Simona Halep in straight sets. Simona Halep was the overwhelming favourite but the three-time grand slam finalist was outclassed by hard-hitting Osaka 6-3 6-0 on Friday. Naomi Osaka \u2013 who eliminated five-time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25060,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25058\/revisions\/25060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}