{"id":665214,"date":"2026-05-12T21:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/665214\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T21:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T21:03:13","slug":"italian-open-2026-sorana-cirstea-reaches-rome-semi-finals-in-her-final-season-before-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/665214\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Open 2026: Sorana Cirstea reaches Rome semi-finals in her final season before retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When Cirstea announced this season would be her farewell after a 20-year career, not even her dreams would have suggested the reality of how it has panned out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Announcing her retirement has led to playing with new-found freedom, as well as a feeling of having nothing left to prove.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This liberated mindset has produced some of the best results of her career &#8211; particularly on clay where she has won 10 of her 12 matches so far.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier this week, she became the oldest player to beat a world number one after taking out Aryna Sabalenka in the Rome third round.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If Cirstea manages to beat Coco Gauff or Mirra Andreeva in the semi-finals, she will also break another notable barrier &#8211; finally cracking the world&#8217;s top 20.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having forged a solid career which has included four WTA titles and two Grand Slam quarter-finals, Cirstea has never gone higher than a peak of 21st &#8211; which came way back in 2013.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Given she is playing some of the finest tennis of her career, it has prompted many people to ask whether she could reconsider her decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cirstea remains committed to hanging up her racquet, although she has added a caveat as her run in Rome continued.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Maybe if I win the tournament, I promise I&#8217;ll think about it,&#8221; she laughed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Cirstea announced this season would be her farewell after a 20-year career, not even her dreams would&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-665214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}