Two-time Grand Slam champion and former world number one Simona Halep has retired from tennis.
The Romanian announced her decision on court at the Transylvania Open following her 6-1 6-1 first-round loss to Lucia Bronzetti.
The 33-year-old recently said she was considering retirement, externally because of a knee injury that forced her to withdraw from Australian Open qualifying last month.
This week’s event was just her fifth tournament since returning to the WTA Tour following a doping ban, in a case which went on for almost two years.
Making an emotional statement, external to the crowd, Halep said: “I’m making this decision with my soul.
“It’s a beautiful thing. I became world number one, 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.”
Halep memorably won her first major title at the French Open in 2018, defeating Sloane Stephens, having lost her previous three Grand Slam finals.
She then won at Wimbledon in 2019, committing just three unforced errors in a stunning final victory over Serena Williams.
She won 22 other WTA Tour titles and spent 64 weeks as world number one.
Halep was given a four-year ban for two separate doping offences after initially testing positive for a banned substance in August 2022.
She always maintained her innocence and appealed against the ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2024.
The panel ruled Halep, “on the balance of probabilities”, had not taken roxadustat intentionally and her ban was reduced to nine months.
She subsequently returned to the WTA Tour in March 2024 but played just six matches through to 2025 and won only once.
“I’ve always been realistic with myself and with my body,” Halep said.
“Where I probably was, it’s very hard to get there and I know what it means to get there.”
‘Sporting careers can be fragile’ – analysis
BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller
Halep arrived at the 2022 US Open as a top-10 player who had just reached the last four at Wimbledon. It would have seemed ludicrous to suggest she would never win another tour-level match.
But sporting careers can be very fragile and time lost to the ban and an unresponsive body made her realise quickly there would be no turning back the clock.
Halep’s two Grand Slam titles will, however, live long in the memory.
Firstly at Roland Garros in 2018, as she had to recover from a set and a break of serve down to beat Sloane Stephens and avoid a fourth successive Grand Slam final defeat.
And then at Wimbledon a year later when she beat Serena Williams in just 56 minutes on Centre Court in what she was sure was the best match of her life.
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