in the third set and ended up losing. In the second round of the French Open, she was upset by Mirjana Lučić-Baroni for the second time in the last three majors. She performed even worse at Wimbledon, being upset by No. 106 Jana Čepelová while struggling with a blister on her foot. After Wimbledon, Halep took more than a month off before returning to tournament play for the North American hard court season. She rebounded from her results off the hard courts and finished runner-up at both Premier 5 events in August, the Canadian Open and the Cincinnati Open. Halep had won the second set of the final in Canada against Belinda Bencic, but ultimately needed to retire midway through the third set due to heat illness two and a half hours into the match. She recovered in time to play Cincinnati, but lost in the final to world No. 1 Serena Williams. Halep then produced her best Grand Slam result of the year, a semifinal at the US Open. She was upset at the event by the eventual champion and No. 26, Flavia Pennetta. At the end of the season, Halep qualified for the WTA Finals and became the top seed at the event after Williams withdrew. Although she defeated Pennetta in her opening match, she lost her last two round robin matches to No. 4, Maria Sharapova and No. 6, Agnieszka Radwańska and did not advance out of the group. Nonetheless, she finished the season with a career-best year-end ranking of No. 2 in the world. 2016: Premier Mandatory title on clay Halep underperformed at the Grand Slam events in 2016. She also had a slow start to the year, highlighted by an opening round loss at the Australian Open to qualifier Zhang Shuai who had not won a Grand Slam match in 14 attempts. She dealt with both an achilles injury and infections in the first two months of the season, and delayed nose surgery so she could play in the Fed Cup. In March, Halep lost in the quarterfinals at both Premier Mandatory events, the Indian Wells Open and the Miami Open. Having reached at least the semifinals at both events the previous year, she fell out of the top 5 in the rankings for the first time in over a year and a half. During the clay-court season, Halep won her second career Premier Mandatory