By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday September 3, 2023
When the 2023 season started, Sorana Cirstea hadn’t earned a Top-5 win since 2017. But something was different.
She had been working with coach Tomas Johansson since October 2022, and was doing all the right things to make improvements to her game; all she had to do was hang in and be strong.
She did that and the results have started to come. Top-5 wins came this spring, one at Indian Wells and two more at Miami, and the confidence started to grow.
Five months later Cirstea is hitting her stride on the Grand Slam stage.
On Sunday the 33-year-old Romanian became the oldest woman in history to reach her first US Open quarterfinal with a shutdown performance against Belinda Bencic, 6-3, 6-3. That victory came two days after she toppled No.4-seeded Elena Ryabkina in a two hour and 48-minute battle, 6-3, 6-7(8), 6-4.
Cirstea, who is into her first Grand Slam quarterfinal in over 14 years, now has four Top-5 wins on the season and will look forward to a quarterfinal clash with 10th-seeded Karolina Muchova.
“I felt a lot of times I came out a bit short, like the results would not match the work I have put in,” she said. “It's definitely nice to get here in the quarterfinal, because again, as I mentioned, I feel I have been doing the right things for a while.”
Clearly, her time spent with Swede Johanssen has been well spent.
“I kept telling Thomas, I don't understand why it's not coming together, I'm doing all the right things, I'm playing well,” she recalled of recent struggled. “Mentally I have improved so much, and I'm so much better on the court.
“He said, Just keep going, just keep going. It will come. Also, if it doesn't come, at least you can rest your head at night on the pillow and say you have done everything I could.”
It has come, in spades.
Cirstea is inching ever close to her highest all-time ranking of 21, which she set in 2013.
Even if she doesn’t get there this week, it’s clear she’s on the path.