It was a lucky day for tennis starlet Simona Halep, after she won her first WTA match in three months, at the Cincinnati Open 2021.

She expressed her happiness to be back in court. Halep described missing tournaments as missing nerves. Therefore, she said that she missed the nerves at the time when she was off the sport.

According to the Romanian tennis player, it feels alive to be back on the court.

Simona Halep has been recovering after she sustained an injury to her right calf. That was since the Italian Open 2021, until the Canadian Open last week.

Halep seems to be back better than before, putting her best foot forward to achieve her goals. That was well executed at the Cincinnati Open.

She defeated Magda Linette in the opening round, at a score of 6-4 3-6 6-1. It took her three sets to achieve that, in two hours and ten minutes.

After the match, at a post-match interview, Simona expressed her struggle with the calf injury. She termed it agonizing. It is reported that due to the long break her muscles are still not ready for matches.

Therefore, she had to go for a medical break. This is what the tennis sensation had to say;

“I was very scared to actually come back because it was really painful in Rome. And, it was the first time in my life that I had this injury, so I didn’t know how to manage [it]. But I took enough time to recover, and now I feel safe on court,” she said.

What many people do not know is that Halep is a two-time Cincinnati runner-up. She has had a successful career throughout.

During the interview, Simona went on to explain how she felt during the break;

“The competition, the nerves. I felt sick before the match in the stomach. I always get nervous before the matches, so I missed that a lot. And now, having it back, it feels like a life.”

Continuation

Nevertheless, the matches have to go on. In the second round, she will be facing the winner of the current Canadian Open dunned Camila Giorgi as well as semifinalist Jessica Pegula.

All eyes are now on her to see how much she will achieve at the Western and Southern Open before the US Open 2021.

At the end of 2011, Simona first broke into the world’s top 50 and reached the top 20 in August 2013. She emerged at the top 10 in January 2014.

Halep won her first six WTA titles in the same calendar in 2013, becoming the first to do so since Steffi Graf in 1986. This crowned her the honour of being named as the WTA Most Improved Player at the end of the year.

The tennis icon went on making tremendous achievements and thus reached three Grand Slam finals at the 2014 French Open, the 2017 French Open and the 2018 Australian Open, before winning her first Grand Slam singles title at the 2018 French Open against Sloane Stephens.

Halep was the WTA Most Popular Player of the Year for two consecutive years in 2014 and 2015, as well as the WTA Fan Favorite Singles Player of the Year for three consecutive years 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.

Simona is the third Romanian to be in the top 10 of the WTA rankings after Virginia Ruzici and Irina and the second Romanian woman to win a Grand Slam singles title after Ruzici.