No.6 seed Yuan Yue came from 3-0 down in the second set to defeat wild card Simona Halep 6-3, 6-3 in 1 hour and 22 minutes in the first round of the Hong Kong Tennis Open.
Hong Kong: Scores | Draws | Order of play
Yuan fired 22 winners and committed only 12 unforced errors as she overpowered the 33-year-old former World No.1, rattling off the last six games in a row to set up a second-round meeting with either Nao Hibino or Aliaksandra Sasnovich. In her on-court interview afterwards, she admitted that she had been "nervous" ahead of the match, but reminded herself that she had to "keep going to play to win this."
Halep made her return from a doping suspension of nine months -- reduced from an original four years -- in Miami in March, losing to Paula Badosa in the first round. However, a left knee injury forced her to retire against McCartney Kessler in the first round of the Paris WTA 125 event in May and sidelined her for another four months.
Four weeks ago, Halep notched her first match win since 2022 in the Hong Kong WTA 125 tournament in three sets against Arina Rodionova before falling 6-2, 6-1 to Anna Blinkova in the second round. On the same courts for this week's WTA 250 event, playing her fourth tournament and fifth match of the year, she was unable to replicate the result against No.45-ranked Yuan.
Halep was intermittently able to out-manoeuvre the Chinese 26-year-old, who claimed her first Hologic WTA Tour title in Austin this year. But by and large, Yuan was able to hit through Halep's defenses, using heavy forehands to pull the Romanian wide off court and creating the open space.
Halep's own rust also showed in 19 unforced errors, which outweighed her 17 winners. Despite Yuan's brief dip in form at the start of the second set, once she found her groove she rolled to victory. During the six-game streak with which she wrapped up the match, Yuan did not face game point.
Halep takes positives, uncertain about 2025 schedule: Afterwards, Halep said that the bright side of her defeat was in her improvement.
"Was not bad at all, but the opponent was playing really well and she had confidence," she said. "I would say I'm not happy with the way I played, but it's much better than previous matches so I'm just taking the positives. Body is tired, but it's normal because I had such a long break. It's better than last time, so I take it as a positive."
Looking ahead, Halep was unsure of her 2025 schedule, but had a firm goal for the off-season.
"[The schedule] depends on wild cards, doesn't depend on me," she said. "About the off-season, I just want to woork harder than I did these few weeks, because I really need a stronger body to perform at this level."
