ROME — Tennis retirements are often painful. Whether it was Rafael Nadal’s agonizing final season in 2024, or Andy Murray barely being able to take the court for his last Wimbledon in the same year, there have been numerous reminders of how hard it is to pick the right moment to say goodbye. Mic-drops, like Pete Sampras winning the 2002 U.S. Open, are rare; Serena and Venus Williams both avoided the word as much as they could, with the latter coming back from a hiatus to play at 45 and the former causing intrigue about whether she will, too.

This year, Stan Wawrinka and Gaël Monfils are in the middle of their farewell tours, and a third-round Australian Open run for Wawrinka aside, neither have made a major impact. Going out at the right time is almost impossible for a sportsperson, given the heft of a decision that has prompted the idea, referred to in Roger Federer’s “Twelve Final Days” documentary, that “athletes die twice.”

Sorana Cîrstea is very much alive.

The 36-year-old from Romania is having the time of her life in her valedictory season. Since announcing that 2026 will bring down the curtain on a 20-year career, Cîrstea has won a WTA Tour title in her home country at the Transylvania Open, beaten a world No. 1 for the first time, and this week climbed to a joint career-high ranking of No. 21, which she could surpass before the rankings update Monday.

After beating Aryna Sabalenka at the Italian Open to inflict the world No. 1’s earliest tournament exit in 15 months, Cîrstea took out No. 13 seed Linda Nosková, and then former French Open champion Jeļena Ostapenko, to set up a semifinal against Coco Gauff, the two-time Grand Slam champion. Cîrstea will relish the role of potential giantkiller again — she has 26 career wins against top-10 opposition, dating back to 2008.

“I’m enjoying more and I’m trying to do more stuff off-court, I’m smiling a bit more,” she said of the mindset behind her performances, in an interview at the Foro Italico last week.

“I might be more relaxed in practices and everything I do around it, but I’m still working very hard because I’m very competitive. Even if this is my last year, I still want to improve a lot of things.”

“Competitive” is probably an understatement. “She’s a fighter,” Sabalenka said during an interview with the WTA Tour after losing to Cîrstea Saturday.

“It’s sad to see her leaving because I feel like she’s one of those players that’s fighting no matter what.”

Over the past 20 years, Cîrstea has picked up four WTA titles in singles and six in doubles, thanks in part to an excellent backhand and a solid game at the net. She has so far reached two major quarterfinals, at the French Open in 2009 and the U.S. Open in 2023, and she has been a consistent presence in the world’s top 30. She has also developed a reputation as a player who refuses to give in.

“Since I was a kid, I’ve always had this fire in me,” she said.

“Sometimes it does get a little bit too intense and I wish I would be a little more relaxed, the way I am off court. Sometimes I manage, sometimes I don’t. But I think it comes again to the fact that I’m very competitive and very ambitious and I always want to win no matter who I play and also I’m very tough on myself.

“I always want to do the things that I worked on and I don’t give myself much room for a mistake. So maybe sometimes this mentality helped me but maybe it wasn’t great in some moments.”

At January’s Australian Open, Cîrstea complained about Naomi Osaka saying “come on” to herself between Cîrstea’s serves. After Osaka won their second-round match, Cîrstea greeted her for the post-match handshake by telling Osaka that she didn’t know what fair play was. Osaka made a joke of the incident in her on-court interview, later apologizing in her news conference for making what she said were “disrespectful” comments.

“I don’t like disrespecting people. That’s not what I do,” Osaka added.

“That I didn’t understand,” Cîrstea said in Rome.

“It wasn’t too intense there. I just played my match. She stopped many, many times during the match and it was a cold exchange and then she carried on. … So from my side, there was nothing, nothing much there. She made a big deal out of it.

“So no, from that point of view, I look back and I’ve had a normal attitude and normal behavior. Sometimes I’m talking when there is a really tight match and sometimes I get too intense on myself. Those are the moments, a little bit, where I wish I would be a little more laid-back.”

A representative for Osaka did not respond to a request for comment on Cîrstea’s recollection of the incident, which caused a brief stir at the time. It has proven to be a mere footnote in their seasons, which for Cîrstea has led to her pushing even more of the world’s best players to the brink.

She led Gauff by a set and a break before succumbing at the Madrid Open last month, and a couple of tournaments before, she took world No. 7 Mirra Andreeva to a third set in the quarterfinals of the Upper Austria Ladies Linz Open. She is 11th in the live standings for ranking points won in 2026, 3 places short of qualifying for the season-ending WTA Tour Finals.

“Today in important moments I tried to play aggressive, I tried to play on my terms,” she said in a news conference after beating Sabalenka, having lost the opening set 6-2. “Against the top girls, you can just not play safe. They are not going to give it to you. You have to earn it.

“What I’m the happiest about is the way I played. I was really following the plan. Also, like I said, winning the match on my terms. This made me happy.”

Ostapenko said ahead of their match, in which Cîrstea again stepped up when it mattered to win the second-set tiebreak 7-0, that the Romanian might have been liberated by knowing this is her final year on tour. “I think (that) gives her a bit of freedom, in a good way, because you don’t have that pressure that you have to defend points and stuff like this,” Ostapenko told the WTA Tour.

“She’s such a hard worker, too. She was injured a few times, and it’s really hard to come back from injuries.“

Cîrstea, who has dealt with shoulder, leg, back, foot and wrist issues, tends to agree. “I think in a way it freed me up a little bit, all those expectations just maybe went through the window because I didn’t have to prove anything anymore,” she said in a mixed zone Monday after beating Nosková.

There is one downside to having such a good season. It leads to constant questions about whether she will reconsider.

“I felt like she could stay for longer,” Sabalenka said Saturday. “It’s her choice. We all respect that. I just wish her the best season to finish her career.”

Cîrstea has been consistent. Retirement is the plan, but a U-turn is not impossible. “My mind is quite set that at the end of the year, I want to retire,” she said Saturday. “We will see how this year will go. A little door is there always open because you never know how things go in life.”

“I want a family and I want also to do other things and I feel like I’m a girl that can do much more than tennis,” Cîrstea said during the interview in Rome.

“There are a lot of things that I wish to do after my career and I want to retire while I’m still playing well, while I am still at the top of the game. I don’t want to retire just because my ranking dropped and I don’t get into tournaments.”

One of her final goals before retiring is to get into the world’s top 20 for the first time. Beating Gauff Thursday would take her to No. 18, but she has few points to defend for the rest of clay-court season and then on the grass this summer. There is still time, for a player who said that the 2026 version of her would beat her younger self.

“I think also with ageing, you mature a lot, you have experience, you know how to handle moments a little bit better,” Cîrstea said after beating Nosková.

“Overall, you are a much better player. If you are healthy… also, in my case, I feel I’m very, very good. I’m way younger than what my passport says. I feel physically stronger and smarter on the court. I’m a more complete player. I have more solutions, I’m more consistent, I have better weapons.”

All this might persuade her to reconsider retiring. But should she resist the temptation, Cîrstea would provide rare evidence that tennis stars can bow out on a high.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women's Tennis

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