Cirstea, 36 and retiring at the end of the season, reaches the Roland-Garros quarter-finals for the first time in 17 years
Sorana Cirstea (No 18), 36 and retiring at year’s end, beat Chinese qualifier Xiyu Wang 6-3, 7-6(4) on Court Suzanne-Lenglen – her first Roland-Garros quarter-final in 17 years, since 2009.
Sorana Cirstea, Roland-Garros 2026 | © PsNewz
Sorana Cirstea, the 18th seed playing her last Roland-Garros, beat Chinese qualifier Xiyu Wang 6-3, 7-6(4) on Court Suzanne-Lenglen on Sunday to reach the quarter-finals of the tournament for the first time since 2009.
The 36-year-old Romanian, who announced in December 2025 that she would retire at the end of the 2026 season, has spent the year producing the best tennis of her career – including her top-20 debut, her first win over a world No. 1 in Rome, and now a Grand Slam quarter-final appearance separated from her previous one by 17 years. Without losing a set.
Cirstea, the most experienced player on the court by a decade, took control of the first set early and led 5-1 before Wang found a way back. The world No. 148, who had come through three previous rounds without losing a set and was playing her first round of 16 at a major in eight Slam appearances, broke Cirstea as the Romanian served for the opening set and then found a brief stretch of competitive form. Cirstea served it out at 5-3 in the second attempt to close out a set that had taken almost an hour to win, in conditions that hovered around 30 degrees on a sunlit Lenglen.
Only nine games lost
The second set tracked the same shape on serve until the tie-break, which Cirstea ran 7-4. By then the contrast in level between the two players was as wide as the contrast in their experience at this stage of a major. Wang, who had spent her tournament navigating draws – qualifying through, then beating Yuliia Starodubtseva, then receiving a walkover from 26th seed Hailey Baptiste at 5-4 in the second round – was a player out of her depth on the run-in. Cirstea was the one who closed.
The win is Cirstea’s third Grand Slam quarter-final of her career – Roland-Garros 2009, US Open 2023, and now Roland-Garros 2026. She has lost only nine games across four rounds at this tournament, including a 6-0, 6-0 dismantling of Solana Sierra on Friday that made her the oldest player in the Open Era to claim a Grand Slam main-draw match by double bagel.
She has won 28 matches and lost eight on the year, including, in Rome in late April, her first ever win over a reigning world No. 1, beating Aryna Sabalenka on clay in three sets.
She will face the winner of Russian eighth seed Mirra Andreeva against Switzerland’s Jil Teichmann in the quarter-finals.
