Alicja Rosolska has retired from professional tennis, closing out her 24-year career with an appearance in the doubles final of a WTA challenger tournament in Warsaw. Playing alongside partner Martyna Kubka, the 40-year-old lost 3-6, 1-6 to Weronika Falkowska and American Alana Smith in what was her final match as a professional.
Rosolska said afterward. She said she was glad to have had the chance to play in Warsaw, and was happiest that she and Kubka had not lost in the first round but reached the final instead. She said that, oddly, she felt most relaxed and physically at her best going into the final, yet played her worst tennis of the tournament. She said she wanted to perform well enough to have no regrets, but that Falkowska and Smith had not let them play their best tennis, adding that sometimes a player performs only as well as the opponent allows. She said she was not entirely satisfied with the match itself but was happy with the tournament overall, and that she was glad to have had the career she had and to have played her last match in front of Polish fans.
Warsaw is Rosolska's home city. She played her first tournament there in 2002, an under-10 event, and her first professional tournament in the same city that year as a singles player. From 2005 she focused mainly on doubles, though she still made occasional singles appearances until 2019. It was 21 years ago, playing with Klaudia Jans-Ignacik, that she first reached a Warsaw final, at what was then a main WTA tour event. She reached a second Warsaw final four years ago, again on the main tour. This year's tournament, by contrast, was a lower-tier challenger event.
Phone alarm interrupts the final
During the first set of the final, Rosolska's phone rang mid-game, amusing the crowd, the other players and the chair umpire before she ran to her bag to silence it. She explained that it was her alarm. She said that the day before, she had waited a long time for her match to start and grew tired, so she took a nap and set an alarm for 4:30 p.m., not realizing she had set it to repeat for the entire week. Rosolska, who turns 41 in December, is a nine-time winner of WTA doubles titles.
Motherhood on the tour
Rosolska is mother to Charlie, born in December 2020, and Hugo, born in early 2024. In her on-court speech after the final, she thanked her husband Dan and her sons, recalling with a smile preparing for matches at playgrounds and while changing diapers.
She said combining motherhood with professional tennis brought her joy and added curiosity to life on tour, joking that she no longer knew what she used to do with her free time, though she said she probably trained more in the gym and on court back then. She said having children showed her how much she could still get done despite training, and that her sons motivated her but also left her with less time to rest and concentrate before matches. She said she was happiest playing the first match of the day, because later matches were harder after a full day of playing with her children before heading to the court, which sapped her energy. She said her husband and her mother, who traveled with her to tournaments, sometimes told her to go rest, but she did not want to leave her sons, and that she always wanted to be a mother first and a player second. Rosolska was a finalist in mixed doubles at the 2018 US Open.
Stroke and recovery
The harder factor behind her recent fatigue was a stroke she suffered in the spring of last year. She wanted to play Wimbledon just two months later, but it was clear her return to the court would take a long time. She returned to Grand Slam competition exactly a year after the stroke, at Wimbledon, her favorite tournament, one of five events she played following the stroke. In each of those tournaments, she was affected by left-side weakness caused by the stroke.
Asked whether she felt some relief after her final match, Rosolska said perhaps a little. She said she struggled with her left leg in the Warsaw semifinal, feeling as though she was dragging it across the court, and that her left arm no longer tossed the ball for her serve the way it should. She said she constantly felt she was not performing at full capacity, which took away from her enjoyment of the game, and that she could see she was playing much worse while her health did not allow for more. She said she sometimes struggled on court simply to move her leg, that she was no longer flying at the net but spoiling volleys instead, and that she knew those errors came because her left leg would not move forward. She said she was angry but understood what she had been through and had to accept it and play with what she had. She said she was relieved in the sense that she no longer needed to push herself to stay motivated and could relax, and that going forward she would play tennis purely for enjoyment.
Asked whether her positive outlook helped her avoid asking why the stroke happened to her, and whether it helped that it came at a later stage of her career, Rosolska said it was hard to answer, calling it a stroke of luck within misfortune. She said she was glad she recovered quickly and was young enough to get back on court, adding that if the stroke had come later it could have ended much worse, while if it had come earlier she likely would not have been able to play for as many years afterward. Rosolska is a four-time Olympian.
Career highs and low points
One of the most important points of her career was reaching the Wimbledon doubles semifinal in 2018. Speaking to reporters after the Warsaw tournament, Rosolska said she could not single out one most important moment from her career, citing too many years and too many variables that opened the way to significant achievements. She said she would need to name at least five: her first Polish under-12 championship final, won with her sister; her first WTA titles; a national team match against Spain, played alongside Agnieszka Radwanska, that secured Poland's promotion to the World Group; every one of her Olympic appearances; and the United Cup, where she got to play alongside Lukasz Kubot, calling it a great experience. She also named her two biggest successes: the US Open mixed doubles final and the Wimbledon semifinal.
Just as she could not name one high point, she said she could not name one hardest moment either. She said a tennis player is constantly dealing with difficult stretches, recalling losing streaks of maybe 11 or even 13 matches in a row, dips in form, health problems and injuries, and a period when she faced the possibility of shoulder surgery. She said athletes have to cope with such setbacks, but that they are part of why she ended up where she did, and that finishing her career on the center court in Warsaw made her very happy.
Rosolska said she felt no sense of complete fulfillment, and added that she does not think any player feels fulfilled when ending a career. She said even Roger Federer probably wanted to break more records, and that she herself had wanted to win a 10th title to close out her career but did not manage it, leaving something missing. She said she never won a Grand Slam title or an Olympic medal, and that there are many such near misses, so fulfillment is not the right word, though she said she is happy with her career and the path she took. Rosolska has reached 16 WTA tournament finals.
What comes next
Rosolska said she has no plans yet, not even for the immediate holidays. She said that after Wimbledon she knew she needed to maintain her form to play the Warsaw tournament, and that now she is free to fly somewhere with her sons or go to the countryside and make use of the summer break before deciding what to do next.
She said tennis is her passion, so she does not intend to stop watching matches, cheering for her compatriots or checking their results. People in the Polish tennis community have said her experience would make her ideal for passing on knowledge to younger players, and several younger players already competing on the professional tour have asked her about coaching. Rosolska said she told them she is not ending her playing career in order to start traveling to tournaments again, but that if there is an opportunity to help locally, she might consider it. She said she has small children and wants to spend time with them and be a mother first, and will decide later what else she will do.
