Since the dawn of Open tennis in 1968, a combined total of 51 men and women have known the singular feeling of standing alone at the end of the US Open fortnight. Fifty years, 51 champions.
Ask any of those 51 and they’ll tell you—it takes so much more than talent to win here. You need the whole package: intelligence, desire, stamina, courage. You need to own every shot in the book, and when that’s not enough, you need to be ready to write a new chapter or two. Indeed, the courts of the US Open are tennis’ ultimate proving grounds. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
Twelve former champions are in the field at the 2019 US Open, which figures to make adding to the total of 51 that much more difficult. But there are a number of players with the talent and tenacity to make the difficult disappear; a group which just may have the stuff to claim tennis’ toughest title. As we look forward to the 2019 US Open, USOpen.org takes a closer look at some of those players, asking the question: “Who’s 52?”
In this installment: Simona Halep.
One quick look at Simona Halep’s resumé offers any number of reasons why the 27-year-old Romanian would not only be one of the favorites to claim this year’s US Open women’s singles title, but, in fact, likely the favorite to be the last woman standing at the end of the Flushing fortnight. She’s twice been ranked No. 1 and already owns two Grand Slam singles titles, including the French Open in 2018 and an especially impressive run across the lawns of London earlier this summer, which culminated in a straight-sets thrashing of the women’s game’s GOAT, Serena Williams, for her first career Wimbledon crown. Three times more, she’s reached the final of a major. She’s won 19 career titles in 36 finals, and 10 of those wins were on hard courts. Her career mark at the majors is 87-32.
You get the idea; she’s really good.
But maybe even more significant than any of those numbers, Halep figures to do well in Flushing this year simply because she’s done so poorly there in each of the last two years. And champions of her caliber tend to strongly dislike doing poorly.
Seeded second in 2017 and the women’s top seed last year, Halep’s US Open record over that two-year span is a head-scratching 0-2. In 2017, she lost in the first round to wild card Maria Sharapova; last year, she was dismissed on Day 1 by 44th-ranked Kaia Kanepi. Those puzzling results become even harder to fathom when you consider that in both 2017 and last year, Halep came to New York on a hard-court hot streak, playing her way into the semis in Canada and the final of Cincinnati in 2017; winning north of the border and again reaching the final of Cincinnati in 2018.
But after losing to Kanepi last year, Halep offered up something of a clue as to why she’s struggled on the hard floors of Flushing, where she’s made it as far as the semis only once—in 2015. “It seems like I never play my best tennis here,” Halep said. “Maybe the noise in the crowd, the city is busy; so everything together. I'm a quiet person, so maybe I like the smaller places. I'm not complaining. I just say that I don't really feel 100 percent my game when I step on the court here. But I have to believe in the future I will change something, and it will be better.”
Apparently, it’s better. In taking down Williams in this summer’s Wimbledon final, Halep—long one of the finest tactical players in the women’s game—did a masterful job of keeping her emotions in check. In the largest match of her life against a heavily favored opponent, Halep was the picture of cool, blunting Williams’ power advantage with superb movement and precise counter-punching.
“I tried to control the emotions [and], the nerves were positive this time,” Halep said after the final. "Nothing was negative. So [that] gave me little bit more confidence that I feel the ball and all is good. I don't try to ignore [the emotions] or fight against them. I try to take them as a positive and just try to put them in the right way, which I did today. That's why I was able to do the best match.”
If she can carry that same approach with her to Flushing, there’s no reason Halep shouldn’t plan on a second-Saturday showing. Now ranked No. 4, she owns a winning record against all three women ranked above her. Halep is 3-1 over No. 1 Ashleigh Barty; 4-1 over No. 2 Naomi Osaka; and owns a large 7-3 edge over No. 3 Karolina Pliskova.
For all of those reasons, I'd plan on her doing well at the 2019 US Open. I’m pretty sure she’s done doing poorly.
To read more from this series, visit our "Who's 52?" landing page.
