Sorana Cîrstea
At 36, in her farewell season, Sorana Cîrstea just had the greatest run of her career, beating World No. 1 Sabalenka, cracking the Top 20 for the first time, and reaching a Roland-Garros quarterfinal for the first time in 17 years, before bowing out to Mirra Andreeva.
The context
Sorana Cîrstea is trending because she is writing one of the most improbable farewell stories in women’s tennis. The Romanian, who announced in December 2025 that 2026 would be her final season after nearly two decades on tour, is somehow playing the best tennis of her life on the way out.
The peak came in May–June 2026: at the Italian Open in Rome, she beat then-World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and reached the semifinals, which rocketed her to a career-high ranking of World No. 18 on 18 May 2026, making her the oldest player in WTA history to break into the Top 20 for the first time, at age 36. That alone would have been a career capstone. But she kept going.
At Roland-Garros 2026, Cîrstea reached the quarterfinals, her first at the French Open since 2009, a gap of 17 years. That shattered an Open Era record for the longest gap between quarterfinal appearances at the same Grand Slam, surpassing Serena Williams’s 15-year mark. At 36, she was also the third-oldest woman to reach a Roland-Garros quarterfinal in the Open Era.
The run ended on 2 June 2026 on Court Philippe-Chatrier, where she was beaten 0-6, 3-6 in about 56 minutes by No. 8 seed Mirra Andreeva. After the match, Cîrstea confirmed her retirement decision stands, meaning this was, in all likelihood, her final Roland-Garros appearance.
Her 2026 season already includes her first title on home soil: the Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca in February, where she beat Emma Raducanu in the final. Add that to her four career WTA titles and a record-setting Top 20 debut, and the farewell tour has exceeded every expectation.