Martina Hingis

Swiss tennis legend Martina Hingis was often regarded to be one of the greatest of all-time in her sport. Hingis won multiple Grand Slam titles, was ranked number one in the world in both singles and doubles, and set multiple records for the youngest player to achieve various superlatives. When she eventually retired from the sport due to injury she had earned more than $24.7 million in prize money.

Hingis was born in Košice, Czechoslovakia, (now Slovakia), and played in her first tournament when she was just four. Her parents divorced when she was six, with her and her mother defecting from Czechoslovakia in 1987. They emigrated to Switzerland when Hingis was seven becoming a Swiss citizen after her mother remarried to a Swiss man. In 1993 when Hingis was 12 she won the girls’ singles title at the French Open to become the youngest player to win a Grand Slam junior title. The following year she retained her French Open title, won the girls’ singles at Wimbledon, and got to the final of the US Open.

In 1996 Hingis and Helena Suková won the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon, with Hingis becoming the youngest person to win a Grand Slam title at the age of 15 years and nine months. She competed in both the singles and the doubles at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, reaching the quarter-finals in the latter. The following year she won the singles title at the Australian Open to become the youngest Grand Slam winner in the 20th century. In July 1997 she won Wimbledon, making her the youngest singles champion at the All England Club since Lottie Dod won in 1887. In 1997 Hingis also won the US Open and reached the final of the French Open. The French Open singles title would be the only Grand Slam tournament that Hingis would fail to win during her illustrious career.

In all Hingis won five Grand Slam singles titles – three at Australia (1997-99), and one each at Wimbledon and the US Open, both in 1997. She was world ranked #1 for the first time on 31 March 1997, taking over from Steffi Graf, and between then and October 2001, Hingis held the #1 spot for 209 weeks. The zenith of Hingis’ career was arguably 1997-98 when she had her dominant 1997 year, and then in 1998 won all four Grand Slams in the women’s doubles, becoming only the fourth player in women’s tennis to achieve the feat. She won the Australian Open with Mirjana Lučić, and the other three Grand Slams with the late great Jana Novotná.

Due to ongoing injuries in both ankles, Hingis was forced to take a temporary break from tennis in 2003 when she was 22. By that time she had won 40 singles titles and 36 doubles titles. She made a brief comeback to the sport in 2006 before a hip injury forced her to retire for a second time in November 2007.

Hingis returned to tennis for a third and final time in July 2013, focusing her career as a doubles-only specialist. From 2015 to 2016 she and Leander Paes won all four Grand Slam mixed doubles tournaments. Hingis also won 27 WTA Tour doubles titles and the silver medal with Timea Bacsinszky at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. She retired for good in October 2017 whilst ranked number one in the world in doubles.