Dream crazier
How does it feel, and what does it take, to be on top of the world?
This is the second part of “A journey both difficult and extraordinary”. You can read the first part here.
“I’ve been sick in the stomach with emotion. Maybe I was not ready to win it,” said Simona Halep after her heartbreaking loss to Jelena Ostapenko at the 2017 Roland Garros final—her second Grand Slam final defeat.
That year, at the Miami Open quarterfinals, she experienced a defining moment with her coach, Darren Cahill. Cahill is an Australian former professional tennis player and renowned coach of top players, including Lleyton Hewitt, whom he guided to become the youngest male world No. 1, Andre Agassi, who, under Cahill's mentorship, became the oldest player to hold the No. 1. His coaching résumé also includes Ana Ivanović, and, most recently, Jannik Sinner, the current world No. 1.
During an on-court coaching timeout (which was allowed at WTA tournaments but not Grand Slams until coaching from the stands became standard in 2022), Cahill repeatedly encouraged her to reset after she crumbled under pressure. But Halep fixated on her failures and self-criticism. Frustrated by her mental struggles, Cahill made the unexpected decision to walk away as her coach after that match.
This was a turning point for Halep.
Six weeks later, she reached the Madrid Open final, where she was facing a tough opponent, Kristina Mladenovic, already in her fourth final of the season. Halep battled through a tense first set, coming back from 3-5 down to take the lead. But in the second set, just a game away from victory, frustration got in the way. After missing a crucial backhand, she threw her racket into the clay, slapped it, then kicked it away – a familiar sign of her emotions unraveling. Her fans had seen this before: rushed serves, shaking her head, gestures of self-judgement, all signs that frustration was consuming her.
Yet, this time, she took a breath, picked up her racket, apologized to the crowd, and fought on. Though she lost the set in a tie-break, echoing her loss in Miami, something was different.
After nearly three hours, in what was later voted the second-best match of the year, she defended her Madrid title – her first trophy in nine months.
7–5, 6–7, 6–2. That was a double win because Darren Cahill was back in her box.
"After Miami, he stopped working with me because he was upset about that match," she told WTA Insider. "It wasn’t because I lost, but because of my attitude and him feeling like I gave up. That’s why I started to work hard on my mentality and my psychology. Today, I showed it’s a new Simo, that I don’t give up anymore, even if I lose a close second set."
Tennis players battle not only their opponents but also their own minds every single day. How often have we seen a player reach match point, only to make a small mistake and then lose the entire match? Or suffer a set loss and become mentally demoralized? A single defeat can haunt them through future tournaments, draining their confidence and mental resilience.
I think a player’s true nature is revealed on the court. Through subtle gestures, shot patterns, and reactions, a tennis player's true nature is revealed. It is on the court that their character comes to light. Passion and dedication require vulnerability, and it is through this exposure that our weaknesses and psychological challenges emerge. Yet, it is also within these vulnerabilities that our greatest strengths lie hidden.
In an interview after Miami Open, Cahill said: “It was hard (to leave her), but it was needed. I would have been doing her a disservice if I just patted her on the back and walked away and said, ‘No worries, we’ll pick things up next week.’ Because it was holding her back, so I felt like it was just me doing my job. Regardless of whether it cost me my position as a coach, it was better for her in the long run to understand what she was doing on the court and become better from it.”
It was a pivotal moment in her career, and by stepping back, he forced Halep to face her psychological struggles and inner demons head-on and unlock her hidden potential.
But an athlete’s success isn’t solely built on talent or discipline—it thrives within a strong support system.
At a Sports Psychology Forum hosted by the Romanian Olympic Committee in 2023, leading experts in sport psychology, such as Paul Gorczynski, Paul Wylleman, and Alexis Ruffault, emphasized the importance of mental health literacy from an early stage. Knowledge, awareness, and emotional resilience shape an athlete’s long-term success. Behind every champion stands a network of family, coaches, trainers, and psychologists, fostering not only performance but also psychological well-being, academic growth, and financial stability. In short, excellence in sports isn’t achieved in isolation; it’s built through a well-rounded, intentional support system that cultivates the athlete as a whole person, not just a competitor.
Simona Halep was fortunate to have such a strong support system around her. Too often, we take the success of these elite athletes for granted. Fans celebrate Grand Slam champions, but how often do we acknowledge the years of sacrifice and struggle behind those titles? Reaching the top 10, top 50, or even top 100 in the world is no small feat. We admire their talent, their performances, their titles, but we rarely stop to consider the immense effort, sacrifice, and infrastructure behind their rise. Reaching the top of any sport isn’t just about talent and hard work; it demands something more – something intangible that separates the best from the truly great.
In June, Halep reached the second Grand Slam final of her career at Roland Garros, where she entered as a favorite. Her opponent was Jelena Ostapenko, a 20-year-old unseeded Latvian who hadn’t win any WTA title at that time. Winning this title would have held a double significance for Simona: winning her first Grand Slam and becoming no. 1 in the world.
In the final set, Halep was leading 3-1 and was just four games away from the biggest victory of her career. But Ostapenko unleashed a stunning comeback, hitting winners from all over the court. She then won five consecutive games to claim the title 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.
That year shaped Halep for what would become the best years of her career: after the heartbreak at Roland Garros, Halep faced more challenges, including a tough loss to Maria Sharapova at the US Open, exposing her serve as a weakness. She then pushed harder, training extra hours on her serve and refining her game. Her relentless work ethic paid off. In Beijing, she finally defeated Sharapova, then overcame Daria Kasatkina and Jelena Ostapenko, proving she had learned from her past setbacks.
On October 7, 2017, she stepped onto the court for the fourth time with a shot at world No. 1. This time, she didn’t let history repeat itself. Playing with confidence, precision, and a stronger serve, she defeated Ostapenko to become the first Romanian to reach the WTA No. 1 ranking.
When I discovered this sport, it felt as if a new world had opened up before me. Watching a tennis match often feels the same as watching a concert, a theater performance, or a great film – it has that rare power to fully immerse you.
It pulls you into its rhythm, into the world of two players exchanging a ball from one end of the court to the other for hours. They make your heart race. They keep you on the edge. They make you shout. They bring tears to your eyes. They make you leap with joy. They create the illusion that time stands still, that in that moment, nothing else matters but them—hitting the ball over and over again on a 23.77-meter court.
Athletes, musicians, artists – they offer something to the world that we, as spectators, can only receive. Yet, in that moment of watching, feeling, and believing, they make us part of something greater. And we were so lucky that Simona took us into this great universe of hers.
Perhaps that is the true secret of champions – not just talent, not just discipline, but the ability to exist fully in the present moment, to transform the simplest, most overused clichés into absolute truths. David Foster Wallace1 in String Theory captured this idea so well:
“You are invited to try to imagine what it would be like to be among the hundred best in the world at something. At anything. I have tried to imagine; it’s hard.”
The real secret behind top athletes’ genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself. The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great player’s mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.
How can great athletes shut off the Iago-like voice of the self? How can they bypass the head and simply and superbly act? How, at the critical moment, can they invoke for themselves a cliché as trite as “One ball at a time” or “Gotta concentrate here,” and mean it, and then do it? Maybe it’s because, for top athletes, clichés present themselves not as trite but simply as true, or perhaps not even as declarative expressions with qualities like depth or triteness or falsehood or truth but as simple imperatives that are either useful or not and, if useful, to be invoked and obeyed and that’s all there is to it.”
Simona’s journey was a true heroine’s journey. She experienced both victories and setbacks, her path was neither clear nor linear. But after relentless effort and battles with her own doubts, she finally reached her triumph.
On a sunny June 9th, 2018, after another Grand Slam final loss in Australia earlier that year, Simona stood at 5-1 (40-30) in the third set, ready to serve against Sloane Stephens. With steadfast focus, she unleashed a clean forehand down the line. It was a winner. Match sealed. The moment was electric – the whole stadium was chanting “Simona! Simona!”, Halep dropped her racket, put her hands on her head stunned, and then fell to the ground as the realization hit: she was finally a Grand Slam champion.
“I’ve been dreaming of this moment since I first started playing tennis,” Halep said. “This is my favorite Grand Slam. I always said that if I won one, I wanted it to be here. And now, it’s real.”
The next year, in 2019, Simona reached the Wimbledon final, facing one of the best tennis players in history: Serena Williams. Serena was a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion and one of the most dominant players this sport has ever seen, with a record of 24 Grand Slam trophies won. Serena was a blend of power, mental strength, and aura of dominance, a combination that affected Simona’s confidence on the court during her career, especially during big matches. But this was the match when Simona broke through another mental barrier. She beat Serena Williams 6-2, 6-2 in just 56 minutes.
The BBC’s Sue Barker asked Halep, “Have you ever played a better match?”
“Never,” Halep replied.
Halep said she had jitters before the match but was quickly able to quell them.
“There is no time for emotions,” she said. “I came on court and gave my best. I’m very sure that was the best match of my life.”
She stayed in the top 10 until 2021, a rare feat in tennis. The year 2022 looked like a year full of potential for her as she won the Melbourne Summer Set 1 title, reached the Wimbledon semifinal, and won the Canadian Open. Then the unexpected happened: in October, she was provisionally suspended for failing a doping test at the US Open. What followed were two years of turmoil, controversy, and public stigma. She fought relentlessly for justice and truth, and finally, in May 2024, CAS reduced her suspension, recognizing that she had not intentionally doped.
In February 2025, at Transylvania Open, her home event, Simona Halep decided to retire from professional tennis.
As I was writing this and rewatching Simona play, I felt, for a few moments, as if she is still there – training, preparing, ready for the next tournament. Admiring an athlete means sharing their journey – celebrating their victories, enduring the waiting, suffering when they suffer, and feeling their absence when they are gone. We will miss Simona. But what a decade of joy, what a privilege it has been to witness Halep’s triumphs, transformation, humbleness, dedication. It was a true heroine's journey.
We lived the crazy dream of a small girl from Constanța who transformed every revolt into victory. A girl without any glamour but with extraordinary brilliance.
“For me, tennis was never about proving something to those who didn’t believe in me. Tennis was my passion. It was my desire to be the best. It was my ambition to achieve great things in tennis, to do everything as perfectly as possible. And for that, I dedicated my life. My life was in the game here. And I succeeded.
I want my passion for tennis to be remembered, my madness on the court, the fact that I didn’t give up when times were tough. The fact that I devoted my entire life to this sport.”
You can read Simona Halep's final interview as an active tennis player in her conversation with Adrian Țoca for treizecizero.ro, here.
David Foster Wallace was an incredible writer, a talented junior player in his youth, he later used tennis as a lens to examine broader themes like excellence, pressure, consciousness, and the paradox of athletic genius. His essay collection, String Theory, showcases this connection, particularly in pieces like Federer as Religious Experience, which I consider one of the most beautiful articles on tennis ever written. A piece that captures the almost mystical beauty of watching an elite athlete perform at the highest level.