| SPORTS CLUB: ROMANIAN PLAYERS AT THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN 20/01/2010 |
| (2010-01-20) |
| Last updated: 2010-01-20 14:33 EET |
Only two Romanian athletes qualified for the second round of the singles competition of the Australian Open, currently held in Melbourne. In the first round, Sorana Carstea outplayed the Australian player Olivia Rogowska 6-3, 2-6, 6-2, but lost to Alisa Kleybanova of Russia, seeded 27th. Kleybanova previously defeated the Australian Jelena Dokici 6-1, 7-5. The other four female players who represented Romania in the first round – Alexandra Dulgheru, Raluca Olaru, Monica Niculescu and Edina Gallovits - have all been eliminated.
The only Romanian player on the main table of the men's category, Victor Hanescu, has qualified for the second round after defeating Juan Igancio Chela of Argentina 6-4, 6-3, 7-6. He is now scheduled to go up against ATP's world number 1 - Roger Federer. In the first round, the Swiss defeated Igor Andreev of Russia in four sets: 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 and 6-0.
It must be noted that Romanian players have rarely excelled in the Australian Open. According to Mediafax, in the past five years, our athletes competing in the tournament's singles events have failed to make it past the second round.
The female players from Romania who made it furthest in the Australian Open have been Irina Sparlea and Virginia Ruzici. The latter reached the 1980 quarter finals, where she lost to Hana Mandlikova, a player from the former Czechoslovakia who went on to win year's trophy.
In 1997, Sparlea got her taste of the quarterfinals, but was outplayed by Martina Hingis from Switzerland, who won the tournament that year.
In the men's competition, Andrei Pavel made it the furthest of all Romanian players who have competed in the Australian Open. Pavel was eliminated from the eighth finals in 1999 by Evgenyi Kafelnikov, and again from the same stage in 2004 by the Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero.
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2026-06-03
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