Simona Halep wasn’t sure she would even make it to the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global this year. The World No.4 overcame illness and injury at the start of the season and finally found her footing on her beloved clay. She never looked back. With every match she won – finishing the regular season at 44-16 – she grew in confidence and became one of the tour’s most reliable winners.
Now she’s put herself in position to finish the season in the Top 5 for the third straight year.
The 25-year-old Romanian began her year behind the eight-ball. After finishing last year at a career-high No.2, Halep’s off-season training block was cut short due to illness that left her hospitalized for a few days. To make matters worse, in her race to prepare for the start of the season she re-injured her Achilles. Halep is a confidence player and the foundation of her game is her body. If she can’t trust it, everything else falls apart. She would win just two matches in her first four tournaments.
All of a sudden, Singapore felt like a world away.
“At the beginning of the year, the first four months were very tough for me,” Halep told WTA Insider. “I didn’t know if I could play this year because I was very sick and I couldn’t play 15 minutes on court. I had infections.”
But after a solid training block with her coach Darren Cahill at the conclusion of the Middle East swing, Halep began to find her game. She scored back-to-back quarterfinals in Indian Wells and Miami, and continued that steady momentum to capture her first title of the season at the Mutua Madrid Open. Her confidence slowly grew from there.
“I won Madrid and then I thought there was a chance I could go to Singapore, but I didn’t even think until the US Open that I could qualify. I said that I had a chance but I didn’t believe 100% that I could go there. So I’m really happy I could go there for a third year.”
In addition to Madrid, Halep would go on to make the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and then go on a 13-match win streak, winning the Bucharest Open and Rogers Cup in Canada. In fact, Halep finished her season by making the quarterfinals or better at six of last seven tournaments of the regular season.
“I feel from the practices that my level is very high,” Halep said. “Of course you never know when you go on court and playing against one tough opponent, but still I’m confident my game is in my hands. At the beginning of the year it was very difficult to think like this.”
Despite her slow start to the season, Halep would ultimately become the third woman to qualify for Singapore, behind Angelique Kerber and Serena Williams. Given her start to the season, it is a credit to her work ethic and resilience that she found a way to turn her season around.
“After May in Madrid, I played very well. I lost a few matches against Serena and Kerber in the last three, four months. So, yeah, I feel good. I feel that I deserve to be there. Of course, I didn’t win a Grand Slam yet, but still I played very well in the big tournaments.”
Halep has always counted Singapore as one of her favorite tournaments. It’s the site of her biggest career win, over then No.1 Serena Williams in group play in 2014. With the good vibes of the city and a good amount of rest and recovery, Halep is looking to improve on her 2015 performance, where she failed to advance out of group.
“You have to play well there because everyone from the top eight is playing crazy tennis, so I have to be ready.”
All photos courtesy of Getty Images.
