By dint of stretching, the rope on which Caroline Garcia was struggling to maintain her balance broke. And the French ended up admitting defeat against Sorana Cirstea (6-4, 4-6, 7-5), 83rd in the world, who qualified for the first quarter-final of her career in Indian Wells. The Romanian saw the victory much earlier but Garcia fought for a long time against her bad feelings. A final return out forehand finally doomed her.
For long minutes, the fifth in the world seemed not to feel the ball well in the cool and windy conditions of the night session. She was taken by the opposing game and not precise enough to put pressure on him. We saw him change his racquet during a game and then put on additional clothing but without that changing anything at the end of this first set.
A disjointed scenario
The sequel was particularly disjointed with a Garcia capable of anything on the court, from alternating foul returns with winning returns in a single game or even winning one of her white service games before giving up the next on a double fault which annoyed her. On this break in the second set, the horizon of the Frenchwoman was particularly darkened but the Romanian did not know how to keep the score. Rather specific to the service since the start of the match, the latter dropped two double faults at 4-3 in her favor and let Garcia return to the match.
The finalist of the Monterrey tournament was able to preserve his face-off in stride (three break points to defend) before equalizing at one set everywhere and completely restarting the match. Except that the French again stammered her score and found herself trailing 3-0, two breaks conceded. Once again, the mission was complicated but she hung on and came back, again, taking advantage of an incredible miss on a smash from her opponent.
At 5-5 in this decisive round, she again gave up her serve, one too many times since, behind, she could not manage to pick up the score to snatch a tie-break. Far too inconsistent (35 winning shots for 36 unforced errors), Garcia failed to get by. Cirstea, she took the opportunity to sign her first face to a world Top 5 in more than five years and her success against Karolina Pliskova in Beijing in 2017.