A former champion and a former world No 1 up against a player in-line to become the world No 1 for the first time in her career. As far as first round matches went, one couldn’t have asked for a better one than the contest between Maria Sharapova and the second ranked Simona Halep.

The Russian went in with a 6-0 win-to-loss record against the Romanian and kept up her clean sheet at the conclusion of the two-hour-42-minute encounter, with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 win. Understandably, Twitter, came up with a potluck of reactions that summed up the significance of the result over again. Here’s, then, a few of Twitter’s best on Sharapova’s upset over Halep:

There were a couple of oblique references, too. About formerly unexpected upsets, and also about the reason why Sharapova was out of the circuit:

There were a few implications on the rankings too. Not just for Halep, but also for Sharapova given that with the additional upset of the seventh seeded Johanna Konta in the fourth quarter, Maria Sharapova is in the reckoning to make it to the quarter-finals at least.

But, the best description of the win, perhaps came from the woman herself even as it gave an indication of what the match meant to her: