Simona Halep

Simona Halep (born 27 September 1991) is a Romanian professional tennis player.

Simona Halep was born on 27 September 1991 in Constanța, Romania to Stere and Tania Halep, who are of Aromanian descent.

She has a brother Nicolae who is five and a half years older.

Halep's father played lower-division football for AS Săgeata Stejaru and worked as a zootechnics technician before becoming the owner of a dairy products factory.

He developed an interest in supporting his children's athletic ventures as a consequence of wondering how far he would have progressed as a footballer if his parents could have provided him with more financial support when he was growing up.

When Halep was four years old, she started playing tennis after attending one of her brother's training sessions.

Although her brother stopped playing the sport after a few years, Halep began practising twice a week until she was six, from which point on she practiced daily.

Although she focused on tennis, she also played football and handball while growing up.

Growing up in Constanța, she routinely trained on the beaches and in the water of the Black Sea.

As a teenager, she was partly sponsored by Corneliu Idu, the owner of the leading tennis club in Constanța.

When Halep was sixteen, she moved away from her family to train in Bucharest.

Halep is a former world No. 1 junior.

She began playing on the ITF Junior Circuit in 2005 at the age of 13 and finished runner-up at the low-level Grade 4 Mamaia-Sen Junior ITF Tournament in Romania in her second career event.

The following year, Halep won all four ITF singles events she entered, including the Mamaia-Sen tournament which was reclassified to mid-level Grade 3.

She also represented Romania at the Junior Fed Cup that year alongside Irina-Camelia Begu and Andreea Mitu.

The team finished in ninth place.

Halep moved up to higher-level events in 2007 and won her first and only Grade 1 title at the Perin Memorial in Umag in April.

She also made her junior Grand Slam debut that year, losing in the third round at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.

Halep improved her junior Grand Slam performance in 2008, her last year on the junior tour.

She entered just four events that year.

In Australia, she finished runner-up to Arantxa Rus at Nottinghill and then lost to Australian Jessica Moore in the semifinals of the Australian Open.

After focusing on professional tournaments, Halep returned to the junior circuit in May and won her first Grade A title at the Trofeo Bonfiglio without dropping a set.

A French Open junior champion and former junior world No. 1, Halep first broke into the world's top 50 at the end of 2011, the top 20 in August 2013, and the top 10 in January 2014.

She won her first six WTA titles in the same calendar year in 2013, and was the first to do so since Steffi Graf in 1986.

This led to her being named the WTA Most Improved Player of the year.

From 27 January 2014 to 8 August 2021, Halep was ranked in the top 10 for 373 consecutive weeks, the eighth-longest streak in WTA history.

During this seven-year span, she finished each year ranked no lower than No. 4. She has won 24 WTA Tour singles titles and finished runner-up 18 times.

Halep reached three major finals at the 2014 French Open, 2017 French Open, and 2018 Australian Open before winning her first major title at the 2018 French Open over Sloane Stephens.

Halep also finished runner-up at the 2014 WTA Finals to Serena Williams, despite defeating Williams in the round-robin stage.

Halep was named the WTA Most Popular Player of the Year in 2014 and 2015, as well as the WTA Fan Favorite Singles Player of the Year in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

She is a recipient of the Patriarchal Cross of Romania and the Order of the Star of Romania, and was named an honorary citizen of Bucharest.

She is the third Romanian to reach the top 10 of the WTA rankings after Virginia Ruzici and Irina Spîrlea, and the second Romanian woman to win a major singles title after Ruzici.

She is also the first Romanian woman to be ranked world No. 1 and the first Romanian to win a Wimbledon singles title.

Halep is regarded as one of the best returners on the WTA Tour, while also building her game around controlled aggression and being able to hit winners from defensive positions.

Halep was suspended from the WTA Tour in October 2022 for four years after testing positive for a banned substance.

Her ban has been reduced to nine months that have already been served as part of her provisional suspension, which would have ended in July 2023.

She has been ranked world number one in singles twice between 2017 and 2019, for a total of 64 weeks, which ranks twelfth in the history of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) rankings.

Halep was the year-end No. 1 in 2017 and 2018.

She has won two Grand Slam singles titles: the 2018 French Open and the 2019 Wimbledon Championships.

She did not defeat Williams a second time until the final of the 2019 Wimbledon Championships.