Former No. 12 Wickmayer to retire after Wimbledon

On Tuesday, Yanina Wickmayer played the final Roland Garros match of her career, a 6-0, 6-0 loss to Victoria Azarenka

View Profile . The former World No. 12 and 2009 US Open semifinalist is to retire from professional tennis following this year's Wimbledon.

"I decided to write the last pages of my tennis book in Wimbledon," the 35-year-old Belgian wrote on social media last week. "Being able to close this last chapter on my own terms surrounded by the people who mean the world to me is what I am most grateful for."

Wickmayer played her first professional tournament in 2004, and surged into the Top 100 in 2008 after notching off a series of milestones across all surfaces in the first half of that season. She made her WTA main-draw debut in Auckland, notched her first two Top 50 wins over sisters Alona and Kateryna Bondarenko in Billie Jean King Cup action, defeated Peng Shuai on home soil in Antwerp for her first tour-level victory, qualified for her first Grand Slam main draw at Roland Garros and reached her first WTA final in Birmingham on grass.

The following year brought even more success for Wickmayer. She defeated Petra Kvitova and Ekaterina Makarova

View Profile en route to her maiden title in Estoril in May on clay. At the US Open, having just cracked the Top 50 for the first time, Wickmayer put together what would be her best showing on the major stage. As a 19-year-old playing just her seventh Grand Slam main draw, she went all the way to the semifinals, a run that included a first-round upset of No. 16 seed Virginie Razzano and a 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 fourth-round barnburner over Kvitova. After adding a second title in Linz in October -- defeating Kvitova once again in the final -- Wickmayer finished 2009 with the highest year-end ranking of her career at No. 16.

Wickmayer reached her career high of No. 12 in April 2010; she finished the year in the Top 30 for four straight years (2009-12) and in the Top 100 for nine years in a row (2008-16). In that period, she added three more titles (Auckland 2010, Tokyo 2015, Washington 2016) to take her total to five, and reached the fourth round of four further Grand Slams (Australian Open 2010 and 2015, US Open 2010, Wimbledon 2011). Wickmayer notched five Top 10 wins overall, with the best by ranking being an upset of No. 7 Li Na at Dubai 2011.

Following Roland Garros in 2020, Wickmayer took a 16-month maternity leave, giving birth to daughter Luana in April 2021. She returned to action in February 2022, and returned to the Top 100 in July 2023 after winning ITF W100 events in Trnava and Surbiton. That year, she also reached the last four of both Warsaw and Seoul -- her first tour-level semifinals since 2017.

But in 2024, Wickmayer was sidelined by injury for another nine months.

"The fact that I can't be myself on court, practice hard and fight my heart out in matches has been a real struggle for me, because that's my DNA," she wrote on social media. "The reason I started playing again after becoming a mom is because I wanted to end this 'tennis' chapter on my own terms. You can count on me and my perseverance that I will work my ass off to come back and write one last beautiful chapter."

Wickmayer returned to action in January, and that chapter is now coming to its conclusion following over two decades of a storied career.