Caroline Garcia to retire from tennis, confirming her last French Open appearance

Yahoo

23-05-2025

French tennis player Caroline Garcia, the 2022 WTA Tour Finals champion and former world No. 4, has confirmed that the 2025 French Open will be her last as she 'says goodbye' to the sport.
'After 15 years competing at the highest level, and more than 25 years putting pretty much every second of my life into it, I feel ready to start a new chapter,' Garcia, 31, wrote on social media.
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'I have a few tournaments left. The first one is at home, at Roland Garros. My 14th consecutive time being part of it. And my last,' she wrote.
Garcia is a French Open champion, having won the women's doubles with compatriot Kristina Mladenovic in 2016. In lifting the trophy, Garcia and Mladenovic became the first French pair to win the event in 45 years.
Garcia, whose best singles run in Paris took her to the quarterfinals in 2017, won 11 WTA Tour singles titles in her career, three of them at the 1,000 level, one rung below a Grand Slam.
In 2022, she entered the season-ending Tour Finals as the No. 6 seed, but qualified from a group containing then-world No. 1 Iga Świątek. She then beat Aryna Sabalenka in the final to take the title, despite Sabalenka having beaten the world No. 1, No. 2 (Ons Jabeur) and No. 3 (Jessica Pegula) in previous rounds.
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Garcia also achieved her best singles Grand Slam result in the same year, reaching the U.S. Open semifinals, where she lost to Jabeur. Her success that year came after a period of more difficult results, after which she took a break from the sport to recover from a foot injury. Garcia later said that she developed an eating disorder in that period, which she later described as one of 'many tears, many sleepless nights' in an interview with L'Equipe.
Garcia has been one of the most open players about the pressure of being an elite athlete and its impact on everyday life. She has posted publicly about the abuse players receive online after losing matches, as well as being open about the connection between results and mental health.
After a challenging 2024 season, she ended her campaign in September after experiencing panic attacks and anxiety over her form.
'I'm tired of living in a world where my worth is measured by last week's results, my ranking, or my unforced errors,' Garcia wrote in a post on X.
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'I'm 30 now, and I've had an incredible career—winning 1000-level titles, the WTA Finals, doubles Slams, reaching No. 4 in the world.
'But in my mind, I've been stuck on what I haven't achieved. I never made it to No. 1, never won a Slam, never reached an Olympic podium. I've been inconsistent, unable to stay in the top 10 for a full year,' she wrote.
In announcing her last French Open, Garcia said that it will not be her final tournament as it stands. The main draw begins May 25, with Garcia facing American player Bernarda Pera.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
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