Simona Halep has waved goodbye to professional tennis, with the 33-year-old revealing persistent injuries do not allow her to compete at the highest level.
The Romanian played her first match of the 2025 season on home soil at the WTA event in Cluj-Napoca, falling 6-1 6-1 to Lucia Bronzetti.
It was a dispiriting result far removed from the heights she attained as a former world No.1 and two-time Grand Slam champion.
Currently ranked 870th, she addressed that point in an on-court speech following the loss, comments which have been translated from Romanian.
"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,” said Halep, who battled a knee injury throughout 2024.
“That's why I wanted to come here today in Cluj to play in front of you and say goodbye.
"Even though my performance wasn't very good it was still my soul and I'm very glad you came, and I'll wonder if I'll come back again.
“But for now it's the last time I've played here and I don't want to cry.
"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."
Halep had been a force at the top of the game for almost a decade before Tuesday’s retirement announcement.
She made her top-10 debut in January 2014 after reaching her first major quarterfinal at the Australian Open, the same year she advanced to the Roland Garros final – the first of her five major final appearances.
She would go on to lose her first three – including a dramatic three-setter to Caroline Wozniacki at Australian Open 2018 – before finally breaking through at Roland Garros five months later with a come-from-behind victory over Sloane Stephens.
Halep won her second major title at Wimbledon in 2019, allowing Serena Williams just four games in a dominant performance on Centre Court.
She reached the top ranking in October 2017 and ended both that season and 2018 as the year-end world No.1. She finished seven consecutive seasons (2014 to 2020) inside the top five.
Her last significant Grand Slam run came with a semifinal finish at Wimbledon in 2022.
A few months later, her career was interrupted by two separate doping violations following a first-round loss at the US Open.
A protracted hearing process ensued, and after she was initially banned for four years by the International Tennis Integrity Agency, she appealed that decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which reduced her ban to nine months.
The CAS ruling, delivered in March 2024, included a backdated ban, meaning Halep was free to resume competing immediately.
She returned at the 2024 Miami Open, but played just six matches and lost five – the last of those coming to Bronzetti in Cluj-Napoca.
Halep ends her career with 24 WTA titles, more than $40 million in prize money and almost 600 match wins.