Simona Halep retires from tennis
One of the greatest Romanian athletes, tennis player Simona Halep, announced her retirement at the age of 33.
Ştefan Stoica, 05.02.2025, 13:50
One of the greatest Romanian athletes, tennis player Simona Halep, announced her retirement at the age of 33.
“It is tough to see such a great champion leave the sport”, the Americans from The Tennis Letter, a platform specializing in information on this sport, wrote after the Simona Halep’s announcement that she is retiring. The athlete from Constanţa (southeast) has inspired countless people along the way, The Tennis Letter also wrote.
“I don’t know if it’s sadness or joy. It’s probably both. But I make this decision with an easy heart. I have always been realistic about myself. My body is not strong enough to take me to the level where I probably was. It’s very hard to get there and I know what it means to get there.” These are Simona’s words, said after losing the match to the Italian Lucia Bronzetti, on Tuesday, in Cluj-Napoca (northwest), in the first round of Transylvania Open. Simona later said in a press conference: “I am at peace, I know that I did nothing wrong in tennis. All I want now is to get some rest. I am a professional tennis player who is exhausted from a professional viewpoint and I want to rest. I don’t want to make plans anymore so I will take things as they come and see what happens”.
Simona Halep is, as the numbers show, the greatest tennis player in Romanian history. She was world number one for 64 weeks, between 2017 and 2019, the peak years of her career. She has two Grand Slam titles – the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019 – as well as three other finals played in the most important tennis competitions: two at the French Open (2014, 2017) and one at the Australian Open (2018). She also finished runner-up at the 2014 WTA Finals.
Starting from 2013, the year of her first performance in the big league, she has won 24 titles in total. She won over 40 million dollars from tennis, being in 3rd place all-time, after the Williams sisters. She defeated the younger one, Serena, in the Wimbledon final. The tennis history has also recorded memorable matches of Simona against athletes of the same caliber, such as Maria Sharapova, Angelique Kerber and Caroline Wozniacki.
However, Halep’s most difficult and longest match ever was not played on clay, grass or hard, but in the famous court of arbitration in Lausanne, called to determine whether the Romanian had intentionally doped. In 2022, Halep had tested positive for a banned substance and subsequently suspended for four years. An eternity in tennis and many other sports, especially since, at that time, the Romanian had turned 31. In March last year, following the appeal filed by Halep at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the latter decided that Halep had not intentionally violated anti-doping rules, so the painful match for her own honor was won. She returned to competition, but not at the level she wanted, due to physical problems. The organizers of the French Open and Wimbledon immediately reacted to her the announcement that the Romanian was ending her professional career, evoking her performances and wishing her all the best in her new life, the one after tennis.
