Draft:2022 Simona Halep tennis season

The 2022 Simona Halep tennis season officially began on 4 January 2022 at the Melbourne Summer Set 1. Simona Halep entered the season as the No. 20 ranked player in the world and finished the year as the world No. 10, ending it with 2 WTA titles.

Season highlights
Before starting the 2022 season, Simona Halep faced a tough 2021 season due to multiple injuries, including a severe left calf tear sustained in May at Rome Masters. ⁤ ⁤These injuries impacted her participation in several tournaments, missing two Grand Slams, including the failure of defending the 2019 title at Wimbledon Championships. ⁤As a result of these factors, Simona Halep experienced a significant fall in the rankings, dropping out of the top 10 in WTA rankings for the first time in seven years by August 2021, hence, she entered the season at a lower ranking than usual, peaking at 20.

Halep made a impeccable start of the season, as she wins the first tournament of the season at Melbourne Summer Set 1 by defeating the Russian Veronika Kudermetova at the score of 6–2, 6–3, breaking the title drought since 2020. Additionally, it was her first title won in Australia.

During the first Grand Slam of the year, Australian Open, Halep registered three wins, beating en-route to the 4th round Magdalena Fręch, Beatriz Haddad Maia and Danka Kovinić. In the last 16, she met Alizé Cornet, which appeared to be a tough match condition-wise, both players struggling with the Australian heat, however, the French pulled through in three fierce sets.

Entering the Middle East as an unseeded player, Halep went there without a coach after she parted ways with Daniel Dobre and Adrian Marcu after the outcome of Australian Open. At the Dubai Tennis Chmapionships, she registered her very first top-10 win of the season since 2020, beating the newly-entered top-ten player Ons Jabeur in two sets in the last 8. Subsequently, she was defeated in the semifinals by Jeļena Ostapenko, losing 6 games in a row in the last set. Not much history happened at Qatar Open, as she lost to Caroline Garcia in the first round. After that loss, she leaves the top 25, dropping to the ranking of 27.

Coming back to the Sunshine Double, Halep had to defend only 3rd round points from last year. At Indian Wells, she received a first-round bye, because she has been granted the 24th seed. In the first rounds, she fought Ekaterina Alexandrova and the 16th seed Coco Gauff before facing her fellow Romanian Sorana Cîrstea in the 4th round, thus meaning that the winner of the match would become the Romanian No. 1, nevertheless, Halep continued her streak of defeating Romanians, reaching the count of 18 consecutive wins against them. Eventually, she would end up into her third semifinal of the 2022, where she had to face the future No. 1, the third seed Iga Świątek. Even if Halep had chances to close the first set, she ultimately helped the Polish to construct a fascinating win streak during the year, losing in straight sets.

At Miami Open, Halep unfortunately withdrew before the tournament due to a thigh injury sustained during the semifinal match at the Indian Wells. his would also mean that she would not play at the Billie Jean King Cup. In the next weeks she would announce that Patrick Mouratoglou will be her full-time mentor for the rest of the year, as she continued to train in his academy.

Starting the clay season in a left tone, she withdrew from Charleston Open due to leg injury, having the intention of playing there for the first time ever.

Halep comes back at Madrid Open after a two-month hiatus. She produces the upset of the tournament in the second round against the world no. 2 Paula Badosa, losing only four games. By winning this match, Simona Halep got her third top-2 win since 2016, where she defeated Angelique Kerber at Canadian Open. Once again, she faced Coco Gauff in the last 16, winning in two sets, and Ons Jabeur, where she had been overcome by the Tunisian in straight sets. Jabeur would eventually become the champion of the tournament. Afterwards, Halep entered Italian Open, and she took revenge against Alizé Cornet from the Australian Open match-up earlier this year. Nonetheless, she got struck by Danielle Collins in the next round, finishing the match almost midnight.

Roland Garros for Halep ended to be a dissapointment, as she loses in the second round against Zheng Qinwen, suffering from a panic attack in the course of the match.

Immediately, Halep enters two WTA 250 tournaments: Birmingham Classic and Bad Homburg Open, where she reached semifinals in both ocassions, where she got defeated by Beatriz Haddad Maia, and offered a walkover to Bianca Andreescu, respectively.

At Wimbledon, being seeded 16th, she wins the encounters against Karolína Muchová, Kirsten Flipkens and Magdalena Fręch in the first three rounds. In the last 16, Halep gets her third top–10 win, once again beating Paula Badosa, letting the Spaniard to get only three games throughout the match. In the last eight, she continued her good form against Amanda Anisimova, registering her first Grand Slam semifinal since 2020. Elena Rybakina gets the best of the Romanian in the semifinal, where Halep mainly struggled with her serve, producing nine double faults. Rybakina would become the Wimbledon champion two days later. As the result of this performance, Simona Halep was set to re-enter the top 10 after almost an year, however the All England Club and the Committee of Management of The Championships announced that that ranking points will not be awarded for Wimbledon 2022, due to ban of Russian and Belarusian players at this event, which affected many players performance in the WTA ranking.

Her next tournament was Washington Open, where she couldn't deal with the heat, feeling nauseous in the second round against Anna Kalinskaya. Subsequently, she withdrew in the middle of the match.

Halep's second triumph came from Toronto, where she picked up the wins against Donna Vekić, Zhang Shuai, Jil Teichmann, Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula and Beatriz Haddad Maia. In the semifinal match against Pegula she gets another top-10 win of the season. By getting this title, she wins for the third time, and the first one in Toronto, previously having successful runs in both 2016 and 2018 in Montreal. Also, Halep gets her ninth WTA 1000 title and 24th title overall. Ultimately, she set a new record of having 185 wins at WTA 1000 level tournaments since its implementation in 2009. She also jumped nine spots higher in the rankings, reaching sixth place, right behind Świątek, Kontaveit, Sakkari, Badosa and Jabeur.

Cincinnati Open was cut short for Halep. Right after defeating Anastasia Potapova in demanding three sets, she withdraws in the second round, citing fatigue after winning Toronto.

Finally entering as a top-10 player at a Grand Slam, Halep was seeded 7th at the US Open. However, she did not stay for long, as the qualifier Daria Snigur produces the upset against the Romanian. This marked another first round loss for Halep at US Championships, producing a negative result at the US Open for the third time in five years.

After the US Open, Halep has ended the 2022 season, as she sustained a nose surgery, stating that she had "trouble with breathing properly".

On October 21st, International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) announces that Simona Halep has failed a drug test during US Open, where she was tested positively to Roxadustat, a banned substance that increases endogenous production of erythropoietin and stimulates production of hemoglobin and red blood cells. Subsequently, she was provisionally suspended from playing any official match. Halep will not have the trial until late June 2023, after she got a second interdiction, now based on the Athlete biological passport (ABP) programme, showing irregularities in her ABP. On September 11th 2023, the Independent Tribunal, Sports Resolutions, reached a conclusion and sanctions Halep for TADP breaches with a four-year ban. The Romanian would eventually appeal the result at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). On March 5th 2024, her ban would drastically decrease from four years to nine months, CAS dismissing the ABP breach and reducing the Roxadustat charge.

Finals
Singles: 2 (2 titles)