Simona Halep had no trouble reversing the result of her loss to Amanda Anisimova at last year’s French Open.
Halep won the rematch 6-0, 6-1 in just 54 minutes on Friday to reach the fourth round. Anisimova made 32 unforced errors to Halep’s seven.
The top-seeded Halep extended her winning streak to a career-best 17 matches as she seeks a third Grand Slam title. She won the trophy at Roland Garros in 2018.
Anisimova upset Halep, 29, in straight sets in the quarterfinals in Paris in 2019. But this one went Halep’s way from the start thanks in part to the 19-year-old Anisimova’s inability to put her shots where she wanted.
Halep is among several players who say they’ve returned reinvigorated, rested and with a new mindset from the pandemic-forced break that shut down the tennis tour for much of this year. Others have said the months-long hiatus was bad for their game.
“I became very relaxed,” Halep said. “I saw that the bigger problems are in normal life, not in our sport. So we have the privilege to play these beautiful and great tournaments.”
Halep next faces another 19-year-old, Iga Swiatek.
Swiatek advanced to the fourth round for the second consecutive year with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Canadian wild-card entry Eugenie Bouchard.
The Polish teenager has lost only 13 games so far at Roland Garros and has not dropped a set. She opened her campaign with a first-round upset of 2019 French Open finalist Marketa Vondrousova.
Swiatek hit 30 winners and converted six of her 13 break points against the 168th-ranked Bouchard, a 2014 Wimbledon finalist.
The 54th-ranked Swiatek lost to Halep 6-1, 6-0 in the fourth round last year in her Roland Garros debut.
Swiatek is the daughter of a former Olympic rower. Tomasz Swiatek rowed in the quadruple sculls at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Third-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine also advanced. The two-time French Open quarterfinalist defeated Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-4, 7-5. Svitolina will next face 45th-ranked Caroline Garcia of France, who beat 16th-seeded Elise Mertens 1-6, 6-4, 7-5.
There were shouts of “Bravo!” and “Merci!” filling the arena during Garcia’s win, fans in facemasks jumping up and down and an atmosphere sufficiently rowdy to forget how the coronavirus has taken huge bites out of crowd sizes.
Garcia rode the partisan home support to advance to the fourth round and then told the crowd, “There are not many of you, but you make as much noise as when it’s full.”
The match was played under the new roof on Court Philippe Chatrier. The revamped arena was built to hold 15,000 spectators but has been largely empty and eerily silent this year because of the limit of 1,000 spectators at the clay-court Grand Slam tournament.