Halard-Decugis lived inLa Baule, France, during the initial stages of her career and later moved toPully, Switzerland. She turned professional in 1986. She won theFrench Open junior singles title in 1988 and was theWimbledon junior singles runner-up in 1987. She retired from theWTA Tour tennis circuit at the end of the 2000 season.[1] Her highest WTA Tour singles and doubles rankings was number seven and number one respectively. She had been coached by Arnaud Decugis since 1989.
Halard-Decugis won her first WTA Tour singles title in Puerto Rico. She enjoyed her best season in 1996, when she won her first WTA Tour Tier II singles title in Paris and finished the year with a career-high season-ending singles ranking of No. 15 and as the No. 1 singles player from France. This occurred despite the fact that her playing schedule in the second half of 1996 was curtailed because of a wrist injury sustained during theFed Cup semifinal match against Spain. She only played two tournaments in late 1997 because of injuries.
By winning the singles title inRosmalen in 1998, she became the 20th player to have won singles titles on all four surfaces in the Open Era. Halard also won the singles and doubles titles inPattaya that year, and broke into the top 10 singles ranking in August 1999, becoming the fifth Frenchwoman afterFrançoise Dürr,Mary Pierce,Nathalie Tauziat andAmélie Mauresmo to do so. In 1999, she won WTA Tour singles titles inAuckland andBirmingham and was runner-up on three other occasions.[2] Between 15 November 1999 and 9 January 2000,Julie Halard, Nathalie Tauziat, Amélie Mauresmo and Mary Pierce were all ranked inside the singles top 10, the first time France had four players ranked among the singles top 10.
2000 was to be the final and perhaps the finest year of Halard's professional playing career. She reached theAustralian Open singles quarterfinal for the second time, captured the second WTA Tour Tier II title of her career inEastbourne and reached her career-high singles ranking of No. 7 in February. Halard was also runner-up in Tokyo's Princess Cup in October and won the doubles title withAi Sugiyama. The following week, she won both the singles and doubles titles at the Japan Open in Tokyo, saving three match points in the final to defeat the defending championAmy Frazier.
On her 30th birthday, Halard won the2000 US Open women's doubles title with Ai Sugiyama, her onlyGrand Slam title as a professional. The pair also reached the final atWimbledon, the semifinal at theFrench Open and the quarterfinal at theAustralian Open that year. Halard-Decugis won nine other doubles titles in 2000, five of them with Sugiyama, and became the first Frenchwoman to attain the No. 1 doubles ranking in the Open Era. Halard-Decugis represented her country in the Federation Cup Fed Cup from 1990 to 2000 and in theOlympic Games in 1992 and 2000.
She married her coach, Arnaud Decugis, on 22 September 1995.[3][4] Arnaud Decugis is the great nephew ofMax Decugis, a leading tennis player from France during the early 20th century. The couple have three children[citation needed]
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