Simona Halep will not be able to compete at the Australian Open in January. The former world number one has to withdraw due to injury.
Former world number one Simona Halep, who is trying to re-establish herself on the WTA Tour after a shortened doping suspension, will miss the first tournaments of the coming year, including the Australian Open.
As the 33-year-old announced on Instagram on Thursday, she is suffering from pain in her shoulder and knee and is therefore not competing in the tournaments in New Zealand and Australia. Halep now plans to make her season debut at her home tournament in Cluj-Napoca at the beginning of February.
The former French Open and Wimbledon champion is only ranked 877th in the world, but she received a wild card for the qualifiers from the organizers of the Grand Slam tournament in Melbourne last week.
After Halep was initially banned for four years for testing positive at the 2022 US Open and an anomaly in her biological passport, the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was forced to reduce the sanction to nine months last March, allowing Halep to return to the tour immediately. The player denies any intentional doping on her part.
