Simona Halep throws her racket to fans at the end of a match during Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, February 4, 2024. Inquam Photos/Alex Nicodim via REUTERS
(Reuters) -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."
Halep lost in three Grand Slam finals before finally clinching her first major at the French Open in 2018 and went on to win Wimbledon the following year.
She was provisionally suspended in October 2022 after she tested positive for roxadustat - a banned drug that stimulates the production of red blood cells - at the U.S. Open that year.
She was later banned for four years, a period which was cut to nine months last March following an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
"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."
(Reporting by Janina Nuno Rios in Mexico CityEditing by Toby Davis)
