Simona Halep will have an opportunity to hit the ground running at the start of the 2025 season after being given a wildcard for the ASB Classic.
Halep returned to tennis after being away for almost 18 months because of a doping scandal. She tested positive for the banned substance roxadustat and received a provisional suspension in October 2022.
The two-time Grand Slam champion initially received a four-year suspension from the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) due to the positive tests and what the ITIA felt were inconsistencies in her biological passport.
Halep never stopped claiming she was innocent and appealed her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Although CAS did not find the Romanian innocent, it reduced her ban to nine months in March this year, meaning she was immediately cleared to return to professional tennis.
How Halep was treated caused controversy. Many felt her case should not have taken nearly 18 months to resolve, from when she received a provisional suspension to when CAS drastically reduced the 33-year-old's suspension.
Those feelings from some became stronger after Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek's doping cases this year. That pair had their cases kept private while the ITIA investigated, and neither received a provisional suspension for testing positive.
Defenders of both players and the way their cases were handled argue that they found the source of contamination within ten days to avoid provisional suspensions and to keep the cases private, which is within the rules.
The amount of roxadustat in Halep's system was also larger than the tiny traces of clostebol in Sinner's and trimetazidine in Swiatek's, and there were no questions that needed to be answered about Sinner and Swiatek's biological passports.
Halep has spoken angrily about how she was treated compared to Swiatek and Sinner but might need to put those feelings aside to thrive in 2025. The 2019 Wimbledon champion's return in 2024 was not as successful as she hoped.
After playing two tournaments without winning a match, she was ruled out for a few months with an injury. Halep returned in the closing stages of 2024 but struggled to find form and consistency.
Despite those struggles, Halep's name recognition means she receives entries and wildcards into significant tournaments. The former world No. 1 will play at the World Tennis League starting December 19th to prepare for the new season.
Halep has been placed on the same team as Nick Kyrgios at the World Tennis League. That dynamic promises to be interesting because of the Australian's harsh words directed at Sinner and Swiatek since their doping cases became public.
More significantly, Halep received a wildcard into the Australian Open qualifying. She finished as the runner-up in Melbourne in 2018 to Caroline Wozniacki, and that previous performance was likely the main reason for her being given a wildcard.
Halep will prepare for the Australian Open qualifiers at the ASB Classic in Auckland, which is a WTA 250 event, running from December 29th, 2024, until January 5th, 2025, after the tournament's social media pages announced her as its first wildcard. The event could indicate whether she is ready to improve on her level from 2024.
Naomi Osaka, Emma Raducanu, and Sofia Kenin are other former Grand Slam champions on the entry list for the 2025 ASB Classic.
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