Simona Halep Receives Australian Open Qualifying Wild Card

Melbourne will probably be Simona Halep’s main launching pad subsequent month.

Former world No. 1 Halep has accepted a wild card into 2025 Australian Open qualifying at Melbourne Park, January 6-Ninth.

It is going to be Halep’s first Grand Slam look since she suffered a US Open first-round loss to Ukrainian qualifier Daria Snigur in August of 2022.

The 2018 Australian Open finalist Halep mentioned she’s grateful for the wild card and has been coaching exhausting for the 2025 season.

“The considered returning to Australia after three years is thrilling and I’m very grateful to the match for this chance. I’ve been working exhausting to prepare for the 2025 season,” Halep mentioned. “The Australian Open has supplied me with a few of the finest moments in my profession, so I can’t wait to be again in Melbourne and enjoying in entrance of the Aussie followers.”

The 33-year-old Romanian reached the spherical of 16 in her final Australian Open look in 2022. Halep contested the AO fourth spherical or higher in her final 5 Melbourne Park appearances, highlighted by her 2018 last run and 2020 semifinal exhibiting.

Sixteen-year-old Cruz Hewitt, former world No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt’s son, was certainly one of eight Aussie males issued 2025 Australian Open Males’s Qualifying wild playing cards.

American Alycia Parks, whose rating has jumped to No. 82 after she beat Belinda Bencic within the last of the WTA 125 in Angers, France final week, is the highest seed in Australian Open ladies’s qualifying.

Explosive server Parks, Viktorija Golubic and Nuria Parrizas Diaz are the three High-100 ranked ladies set to compete in AO qualifying

The highest-seeded Halep was six factors from her first Grand Slam crown holding a 4-3 lead within the decisive set of the 2018 Australian Open last when Caroline Wozniacki staged a career-defining comeback.

The second-ranked Wozniacki surged by way of the final three video games edging Halep, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4, in a pulsating Australian Open last to seize her maiden main in her third Grand Slam last.

On a steamy Saturday night time in Melbourne, Wozniacki vanquished Grand Slam ghosts and a gallant Halep in an excellent two hour, 50-minute combat.

In a last that includes present and former world No. 1 gamers, the pair pushed one another everywhere in the court docket in a conflict of dizzying drama.