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Simona Halep announced her retirement after her first-round defeat at the WTA Cluj-Napoca tournament in her native Romania.
Romania’s Simona Halep throws her racket after announcing her retirement from professional tennis (AP)
Former world number one and two-time Grand Slam winner Simona Halep announced her retirement from professional tennis on Tuesday after losing in the first round at her home event in Cluj.
Halep, whose career stalled due to a doping ban that was reduced on appeal last year, lost 6-1 6-1 to Italy’s Lucia Bronzetti in her first match in 2025 before announcing her decision.
The 33-year-old Romanian had delayed the start of her season due to pain in her knee and shoulder.
“I don’t know if it’s with sadness or joy, I think I feel both, but I make this decision with my soul at peace, I have always been realistic with myself,” Halep told the crowd at the BT Arena.
“My body cannot take as much so as to get back where I once was, it is very difficult to get there and I know what it means to get there. That is why I wanted to come to Cluj today to play before you and to say goodbye on the tennis court.
“Who knows whether I will return but at the moment it is for the last time that I play here. I don’t want to cry, it is a beautiful thing, I became world number one, I won Grand Slams, it is everything I ever wanted. Life moves on, there is life after tennis too.”
The two-time Grand Slam champion, who had been working to re-establish herself after a doping ban, pulled out of Australian Open qualifying last month citing pain in her knee and shoulder.
Halep returned to tennis in March last year after her career had been on hold since October 7, 2022, after testing positive for roxadustat at the US Open.
The winner of the 2018 French Open and 2019 Wimbledon singles titles was then caught up in a second affair, over “irregularities” in the data of her biological passport.
She was handed a four-year ban by the ITIA, but successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), arguing her positive test for roxadustat — used to treat anaemia and banned as a blood doping agent — was the result of a tainted supplement.
She denied knowingly doping and her ban was reduced from four years to nine months.
But she never managed to regain the level that allowed her to rise to the top of the world rankings in October 2017, a position she occupied for a total of 64 weeks in her career.
Halep won 24 WTA titles over her 19-year career including the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019.
She also played in three other Grand Slam finals — the French Open in 2014 and 2017 and the Australian Open in 2018.
“Being away from the court in this period, I realised how hard the last 15 years were, working every day, no matter how you feel, you must push yourself to the max,” Halep, who won 24 WTA titles, later told a press conference.
“Perhaps life also means something else. I understood that in this period, and I want to enjoy what I am living now. I have done a lot in tennis. I am at peace, content with what I did, and I feel the time has come to look in another direction.”
Halep, who played only four tournaments over the last year, denied knowingly taking roxadustat, blaming contaminated supplements for her positive test.
“I am at peace. I know I didn’t do anything wrong in tennis and I am clean, so, I wasn’t mentally affected at all, but it did take me out of commission,” she added when asked if the ban contributed to her short return to action.
“Maybe it was intended or maybe that’s just how the system was, but I am here, and I am emotionally well, which matters the most.”
(With inputs from Agencies)
- Location :
Bucharest, Romania
