Simona Halep routs Serena Williams at WTA Finals

Serena Williams was routed 6-0, 6-2 by SimonaHalep at the WTA Finals on Wednesday in one of the most one-sided losses of the 18-time Grand Slam champion’s career. The last time Williams managed to win just two games in a WTA Tour or Grand Slam match was in 1998 when she was just 16.

‘Embarrassed is the way I would describe how I played,’ Williams said after   the match. The loss in the round-robin match snapped Williams’ 16-match winning streak at the year-end championships, where she is the two-time defending champion.

The 6-0 first set was the first time since the 2008 championships that Williams had lost a set by that score, against sister Venus. The fourth-ranked Halep had never before beaten a player ranked in the top 3. In her previous two matches against Williams, both last year, the Romanian had won a total of seven games. Halep, runner-up at this year’s French Open, beat Eugenie Bouchard in her opening match and moves to 2-0 in the Red Group. Williams slips to 1-1 and will face Bouchard next.

Williams served six double-faults in the opening set and had 36 unforced errors, three times Halep’s total. But the key to the result was the performance on break points. Both players had six: Williams took none of them while Halep converted five.