Bucharest’s National Tennis Center to be renamed after Simona Halep

The National Tennis Center in Bucharest will officially be renamed the Simona Halep National Tennis Center, the Romanian Tennis Federation (FRT) announced on Tuesday, June 3, according to news agency Agerpres. The decision honors Halep’s outstanding career and contributions to tennis.

“Through this renaming, FRT aims to pay tribute to the athlete who brought major titles to Romania and represented the country with dignity and professionalism on the world’s biggest tennis stages,” the federation said in a statement. “This initiative recognizes her exceptional achievements and the significant role she played in promoting Romanian tennis globally.”

Simona Halep, 33, announced her retirement from professional tennis in February this year. Her last match was a first-round loss to Italy’s Lucia Bronzetti at the Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca.

Over her career, Halep won two Grand Slam titles, at Roland Garros in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019, and played in three other finals, including two more in Paris (2014, 2017) and one at the Australian Open (2018). She first reached the world No. 1 ranking on October 9, 2017, and held the top spot for a total of 64 weeks.

Simona Halep collected 24 singles titles and one in doubles, in addition to 19 other final appearances.

Between August 29, 2022, and March 19, 2024, the Romanian tennis star was sidelined from competition following a provisional suspension for a positive doping test at the 2022 US Open. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne later ruled in her favor, reducing a four-year suspension imposed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) to just nine months. The case was linked to a contaminated supplement.

(Photo source: Inquam Photos/Ovidiu Micsik)