"My time for singles is finished" - Stosur explains coming out of retirement for Strasbourg event
WTA
Australian champion Sam Stosur has stunned the tennis community by coming out of retirement for a one-off appearance at the Internationaux de Strasbourg on Sunday.
Last year, Stosur announced that the 2022 Australian Open would be her last, with the Queenslander deciding to focus solely on doubles after the Melbourne-based grand slam tournament, where she was knocked out by Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the second round.
However, tennis pundits were left baffled when the 38-year-old appeared on the draw for the clay-court tournament in France, where she played local star Harmony Tan in the round of 32 — the 1064th singles match of her professional career.
“Didn’t think I’d be doing this again until two days ago,” Stosur posted to Instagram on Sunday. “Nice feeling and emotions being to play on this court in singles again.”
Stosur suffered a straight sets 6-2 6-1 defeat, with Tan progressing through to the round of 16 where she will face Belgium’s Maryna Zanevska.
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Speaking to reporters after the loss, Stosur explained that event organizers had been looking around for someone to replace a late dropout. The 2010 US Open champion had previously won the Strasbourg singles tournament in 2015 and 2017.
“If Roland Garros calls me and says, ‘You wanna play?’, sure,” she laughed. “But, no, my time for singles is finished. This wasn’t a comeback to singles, it was just a good opportunity. It was good, it was fun, considering I didn’t know I was competing here until a couple of days ago.
"Going into here was a difficult scenario, but mostly I was just excited to get another chance of playing singles in a place where I’ve had a lot of success and enjoy myself.
“Overall, I actually hit the ball really well — I hit some balls as if it were five years ago when the ball was going exactly where I wanted it to! But on other points, she was making me move side to side and it was hard.”
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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