Simona Halep returns at the Miami Open: How we got here

Si-Mo-Na!. . .Si-Mo-Na!. . .Si-Mo-Na!. . .Si-Mo-Na!

For years, that chant reverberated through tennis stadia worldwide—how easily it rolls off the tongue, how chant-friendly that name is!—as Simona Halep mesmerized fans with her exuberantly athletic game and her disarming charm. She enjoyed the universal appeal of players relegated by physique (Halep reports in at 5'6", which may be a stretch) to permanent status as beloved underdogs. It wasn’t just feats of derring-do that made her the click queen of the WTA website in 2014 and 2016.

That chant went silent, though, sending shock waves through tennis, in October 2022. That day, the Romanian star, battling injuries but still ranked No. 7, was suspended for four years by the International Tennis Integrity Agency following a positive test for doping. But fans will be chanting her name again, and soon. Halep, whose sentence was recently reduced on appeal to the Court for the Arbitration of Sport to nine months—essentially, time already served—immediately entered this week’s Miami Open.

"Throughout this long and difficult process, I have maintained my belief that the truth would eventually come out, and that a just decision would be reached, because I am and always have been a clean athlete," Halep said in a statement released by her lawyer, Howard Jacobs.

Brace for it: Si-Mo-Na!. . .Si-Mo-Na!. . .Si-Mo-Na!. . .Si-Mo-Na!

Halep, now 31, seemed the least likely of players to have run afoul of doping-control authorities for any number of reasons, let alone for emerging as a poster-child for overreach in the nebulous world of anti-doping. But then, Halep’s career has been filled with more twists and turns than a theme park water slide.

Although Halep won the Roland Garros junior girls’ title at age 17 and went on to earn the top year-end junior ranking, it took her 14 major main draws before she reached the fourth round. Although she struggled to penetrate deeply into draws, fans and pundits were impressed by her foot speed, a talent for chasing down an opponent’s best placements, and Halep’s marriage of pluck and boundless energy—size be damned.

Halep already had a sizable following, propelled partly by her ability to turn out vocal, patriotic Romanians wherever she went. Then, almost overnight, the pieces began to fall into place. In 2014, she reached her first Grand Slam final, at Roland Garros. She lost to Maria Sharapova but swiftly rose to No. 2 in the rankings. She was voted the WTA’s Most Popular Player of the Year (an honor she retained in 2015). But popularity notwithstanding, Halep’s career was not the joyride some imagined.

Some fans flocked to the Romanian dynamo out of pure admiration for her battle. Others were bewitched by her honest, open manner. Above all, fans were moved by sympathy for Halep’s tendency to leave it all out there—and too often still come up short. The pattern, though, wasn’t merely heroic.

Halep started with a new coach in 2016: Andre Agassi’s former handler, Darren Cahill (his tenure lasted, with breaks, until the fall of 2021). The Australian coach soon discovered that for all her grit, the tiny warrior (dubbed “Halapeno” by tennis personage Brad Gilbert) was often the architect of her own demise. She had a negative streak a mile wide. She was prey to moods, emotions and thoughts that triggered crises of confidence—put less politely, “choking”—as well as puzzling outbursts and unexpected failures.

“She became her worst enemy quite often,” Darren Cahill once told Louisa Thomas of The New Yorker early in 2019. Referring to any given opponent, herself, even her allies in the coaching box, Cahill added, “She fought more than one opponent.”

The relationship between Halep and Cahill survived some tense moments, including a brief walkout by the coach. But to her credit, Halep survived the “shock” and vowed to work on her attitude. Halep made the Roland Garros final again in 2017 but, squandering a 6-4, 3-0 lead, she lost to green Jelena Ostapenko.

But that painful loss opened the gate on Halep’s glory days. In her next four majors, Halep played a final (Australian Open) and, back in Paris, she made her Grand Slam breakthrough with a win over Sloane Stephens. A Grand Slam champion, a former year-end No. 1, Simona Halep finally was no longer the Little Engine That Couldn’t.

The triumph in Paris represented the fulfillment of Halep’s dreams. As a result, she took her foot off the gas and eased into the slow lane to enjoy life. Cahill went on sabbatical for 2019, leaving Halep without a coach until March, when she turned to a familiar former mentor and fellow Romanian, Daniel Dobre. Some four months later, she posted her landmark win. Ranked No. 7, she played a near perfect match to knock off defending champion—and seven-time Wimbledon champ—Serena Williams. It wasn’t as close as the 6-2, 6-2 score indicates.

In the ensuing two-plus years, Halep struggled with injuries as well as a rapidly changing competitive landscape populated by dangerous new rivals including Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka. Out of the picture by early 2022, Cahill advised her to hire Serena Williams’ former mentor, Patrick Mouratoglou. Halep took Cahill’s advice to the max: in a startling reset, she turned over every aspect of her career to the anti-establishment French coach, academy operator, and impresario.

Then the ground beneath Halep’s feet dropped away.

Following a first-round loss at the US Open, Halep announced that she was done for 2022 and would undergo nasal surgery. A few weeks later, the ITIA announced that she had tested positive for Roxadustat - a banned substance favored by cyclists and long-distance runners. Halep protested her innocence from the get-go.

As in a previous case involving Sharapova, a vigorous appeal by a high-profile player with deep financial resources resulted in the CAS significantly reducing the penalty sought by the ITIA while not entirely absolving the player. The reduction has puzzled some, and raised some sticky questions for the sport—not least because, in the interim, the ITIA had also added an additional two years to the original four-year ban when irregularities popped up in Halep’s biological passport.

According to The Guardian newspaper, the ITIA’s investigation into Halep’s violations generated some 8,000 pages of evidence. The final ruling ran to 126 pages. The CAS has yet to release its full report on why it reduced Halep’s six-year suspension to nine months, an implicit rebuke of the ITIA.

“There's a clear appeals process in place,” The ITIA’s director of communications told me in a recent conversation. “Then athlete has the right to appeal, and we respect that process and the result that comes out of it.”

Halep’s supporters, including many credible and well-known insiders, rallied to her defense after Mourtoglou posted a video on Instagram in November, taking responsibility for (inadvertently, he claimed) providing Halep with a collagen supplement that contained Roxadustat. But Halep swiftly broke all contact with him. Chris Evert, among others, they laid the blame squarely on Mouratoglou’s shoulders. (Look for a deeper dive into how the World Anti-Doping Agency and the ITIA operate, and more on this case, soon).

Scientific evidence, dueling lawyers, urine tests and biological passports aside, Cahill offered perhaps the best—and certainly most memorable—defense of his former protégé.

“Firstly, and most importantly, there is NO chance Simona knowingly or purposely took any substance on the banned list,” Cahill told The Guardian. “None. Zero. [With me] Simona wore out the words ‘Please double check this, triple check this to make sure it’s legal, safe and permitted. If you are not sure, I’m not taking it.’”

He added, using a nickname reserved for those closest to Halep, “I stand with Simo.”

Many others do as well. Let the chant begin.