Not every tennis player gets to live out their dream of playing on the biggest stage. For one Romanian hopeful, her ambition was to emulate her hero Simona Halep, but found the brutal reality of professional sport took her in an entirely different direction.

Ioana Ducu had emerged as a talented player from Romania in 2013 and reached 830th in the WTA rankings when she was 17 years of age.

She then claimed the junior singles French Open title at Roland Garros the following year, pointing to her obvious potential as a clay court specialist.

Few would have denied her the chance to dream of making it as the next Halep – and Ducu even admitted she tried to copy her technique to help make that happen.

“Simona Halep is my favourite athlete. I watch her every chance I get and try to steal as much as possible from her,” Ducu said when she was a junior.

“I like her technique, we are similar in many ways. I hope that at some point I can also reach her performances. It takes a lot of work but I hope I will be able to go as far as possible.”

Halep, who won two Grand Slam titles including one at Wimbledon, was later banned over a doping offence for four years before the suspension was reduced to nine months.

The former world No 1 is now back playing, but Ducu never made it to the same heights as her heroine.

On her first foray into the senior world of tennis, she even faced a teenaged Harriet Dart in an ITF doubles match after partnering with British player Eden Silva. But after losing at another ITF event in Ankara, she struggled to make the next step in her career.

Ducu’s highest world ranking was 830 and she won only one tournament – an ITF doubles title in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Injuries played a major role in halting her progress, as the Bucharest-born starlet suffered a series of injuries. She quit the sport altogether in 2017 despite undergoing a seven-hour operation to fix her issues with her shoulder.

Instead of having surgery herself, Ducu is now the one trusted with the scalpel. She has trained to become a surgeon and works at the Floreasca Emergency Clinical Hospital in Bucharest, Romania.

Now 28, Ducu works the Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology and reportedly focuses her work on arthroscopy and sports traumatology. She is also the mother of a two-year-old daughter, according to Sport.ro.

It may not be the ending either player wanted to their respective tennis careers, but Ducu is content with her new life after leaving tennis behind.