Simona Halep of Romania loses a point to Su-Wei Hsieh of Taiwan during their women's singles match on the sixth day at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday July 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Simona Halep of Romania loses a point to Su-Wei Hsieh of Taiwan during their women's singles match on the sixth day at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday July 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) Credit: Ben Curtis

London — And then there was one.

The decimation of Wimbledon’s elite women’s ranks continued on Saturday, as world No. 1 and top-seeded Simona Halep was upset by Taiwan’s Su-Wei Hsieh, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5, before a stunned crowd on Court One.

With the result, only one of the tournament’s top 10 women’s seeds remain — seventh seed Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic. That represents a stunning winnowing of the field before the tournament has reached its halfway point.

To say that the grass-court classic has now opened up for lesser-known players with dreams of winning a Grand Slam is an understatement. It also has opened up for the most accomplished women’s player to grace Centre Court, Serena Williams, who counts seven Wimbledon championships among her 23 Grand Slam titles and may well not have needed any draw-clearing upsets to clear her path to an eighth.

Williams is seeded 25th — an accommodation reached by officials of the All England Club who are aware that her 131st ranking bears no relation to her true ability but, instead, it reflects her 13-month maternity leave that ended this spring.

Halep, a 26-year-old upon whom virtually all of Romania’s sporting hopes depend, was on top of the tennis world just last month, when she won her first Grand Slam title, the 2018 French Open, with a gutsy comeback against American Sloane Stephens. The achievement added credibility to Halep’s No. 1 ranking and made her the pretournament favorite here.

As top seeds tumbled all around her in Wimbledon’s first two rounds — including defending champion Garbine Muguruza, Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki and Stephens, the reigning U.S. Open champion — Halep appeared on sure and steady footing for the July 14 women’s final and a potential meeting with Williams.

Halep had won her only previous meeting with the Hsieh, 32, five years ago in Cincinnati. Primarily regarded as a double player, she entered Wimbledon ranked 48th in the world, never having advanced past the tournament’s third round.

For most of the 40,000 who swarmed into the All England Club for Saturday’s matches, there were four requirements: sunscreen, hat, water bottle and silenced mobile phone with BBC iPlayer installed for monitoring England’s World Cup quarterfinal against Sweden. Wimbledon officials have declined to show the matches on the grounds, so soccer-mad tennis fans are on their own to keep up with the scores.

Halep’s Court One clash with Hsieh was a baseline-hugging affair in which neither player served well and both committed more unforced errors than winners. It also dragged on 2 hours and 20 minutes, longer than it took England to declare victory over Sweden, 2-0, and book its place in the semifinal.