Former world number one and two-time Grand Slam winner Simona Halep has announced her retirement from tennis at the age of 33.
Halep withdrew from Australian Open qualifying owing to knee and shoulder problems before competing in her first match of the 2025 season at her home Transylvania Open in Romania.
The 33-year-old suffered a comprehensive 6-1 6-1 thrashing at the hands of Italy's Lucia Bronzetti, though, and addressing the Cluj crowd afterwards, she confirmed that her on-court career was over, citing physical struggles as her primary reason for retirement.
"I've always been realistic with myself and with my body. Where I probably was, it's very hard to get there and I know what it means to get there," the former world number one said.
"It's a beautiful thing. I became world No 1, I won grand slams, it's all I wanted. Life goes on, there is life after tennis and I hope that we will see each other again.
"I'll come to the tennis here as often as I can and of course I will continue to play – but to be competitive it requires much more and at this moment it is no longer."
A breakdown of Halep's glittering tennis career
The moment @Simona_Halep won the French Open 🏆#tennis pic.twitter.com/h4kP4IllQb
— Eurosport (@eurosport) February 4, 2025
A magnificent career briefly tainted by her recent doping case, Halep has hit her final ace after a stellar 15 years on the court, during which she conquered the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon one season later.
No previous Romanian player had conquered the lawns of SW19 before Halep triumphed over Serena Williams in the 2019 showpiece, taking just 56 minutes to demolish another of the all-time greats.
Also the first Romanian woman ever to be ranked world number one, Halep spent an astronomical 373 weeks in the top 10 of the WTA standings from 2014 to 2021, during which time she also claimed three Grand Slam runners-up finishes at the French Open (2014 and 2017) and Australian Open (2018).
Outside of the four major tournaments, Halep posted a 50% success rate in WTA 1000 finals - winning nine titles from 18 championship matches - and was runner-up to Serena Williams at the 2014 WTA Finals in Singapore.
Injuries often blighted the two-time major winner, though - especially during the latter stage of her career - and she was then slapped with a devastating four-year suspension for failing a doping test and for having irregularities in her biological passport.
A case that attracted extreme media attention due to the International Tennis Integrity Authority's (ITIA) handling of the situation, Halep had her ban reduced from four years to nine months last March but only played another three singles matches at the top level, including Tuesday's defeat.
With an astounding $40.2m (£32.2m) in prize money, Halep ranks third in the all-time WTA rankings in that regard, only behind the Williams sisters themselves.
Ben Knapton
