Simona Halep ended her tennis career earlier this year on home soil, bowing out in the first round of the Transylvania Open and then telling the crowd that she was retiring. But the former world No. 1 had no idea that it would be the final match of her career when she first stepped onto the court.

The two-time Major winner returned from a suspension in March 2024 after successfully appealing her four-year ban and having it reduced to nine months. But a knee injury ruined her comeback, and she barely played before saying goodbye in Romania back in February.

Halep has now revealed that she made the decision to retire in the middle of her 6-1 6-1 defeat to Lucia Bronzetti, realising that her knee was causing her too much trouble, and she could no longer keep up.

The 2019 Wimbledon winner told The National: “I thought about it for a while, but it was not decided when I entered the court that in that match I would retire. But I felt like my place is not there any more.

“I felt physically, I was injured with my knee and I was in pain. So after I lost the first set, I made up my mind and I said, ‘I’m going to stop after this’. And then I went to my parents and I told them that I want to stop. And they said, ‘Okay, announce it’. So the story was like this. Nobody knew.”

The match against Bronzetti lasted 59 minutes, and Halep took the microphone, announcing her retirement. Although it was a sudden decision, the former world No. 1 has no regrets. She added: “So probably that means that, inside myself, it was the right decision. And now I feel it. I think it was the best thing.”

Halep lifted 24 titles during her career, including the French Open and Wimbledon a year later. She spent 64 weeks at No. 1 in the world. However, news of a failed doping test in October 2022 brought something of a premature end to her career.

The Romanian tested positive for the banned substance, Roxadustat, during a test in August 2022 and was provisionally suspended. She argued this was the result of contamination via a collagen supplement. During this time, it was announced that abnormalities were found in her athlete biological passport.

In September 2023, the ITIA announced that an independent tribunal determined that Halep committed “intentional” anti-doping violations, and she was banned for four years. Halep appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and in March 2024, CAS reduced the Romanian’s ban to nine months, making her eligible to return to competition immediately.

They ruled that contamination was the likely cause of the positive test, and dismissed charges relating to the her athlete biological passport. Halep returned at the Miami Open later that month, but she struggled with a knee injury and only played four more tournaments before ending her career.