Martina Hingis has announced her retirement from tennis (again.) Effective from after the year-end tournament in Singapore. She has won 68 singles titles and 26 doubles titles, she has won 102 matches against top 10 players and has won 2-year end tournaments in singles and 3-year end tournaments in doubles and has won millions of tennis fans’ hearts across the globe. But what about the rest of her story?
This definitely isn’t the first time that Martina Hingis retired from tennis, in fact, she did it twice. Once in 2003 and again in 2007, but why did it happen? Well in 2003 she retired after having multiple recent injuries. She claimed that she was in pain and it was too much for her. In her press conferences, she said that she wanted to “focus” on her studies. She claimed she was only going to play tennis recreationally she also wanted to go horseback riding more and she could do that with a more open schedule.
She returned in 2005 after a short-lived retirement. Her first professional competition took place in Thailand in February 2005 where she lost in the first round, after the defeat she said the was rethinking her comeback. Nevertheless, in July she came through with the comeback and played a World Team Tennis event where she beat 2 players inside the top 100 in singles, one of which was Martina Navratilova. She announced her comeback to the WTA on the 29th of November 2005.
Although her return was short-lived, she played her final singles grand slam event to date in 2007, the US Open. In the event, she lost in the third round to a then-teenage Victoria Azarenka 3-6, 1-6, 0-6. She sat out the rest of the year due to a hip injury that was aggravated throughout the 2007 year.
In the following month, she held a press conference in which she said that she had failed a urine test in the year’s Wimbledon. She testified to the ITF that “the very low estimated concentration of benzoylecgonine that it would go unreported in many drug testing programs such as the US military.” Martina even appealed stating that it was so low that it could’ve just been a contamination and not an intentional intake. It did not work though, the ITF stated that she was suspended from professional tennis for two years.
Although she did retire from the sport (again) she played an exhibition match. She also contested in a British celebrity dancing competition show, in which she got knocked out in the second round. In 2010 she announced that she would participate in a full season of the World Team Tennis Tour which many took as a hint to her return including me.She announced on May 5th, 2010 that she would reunite with her old doubles partner, Anna Kournikova and since then she has only been playing doubles tennis.
Throughout her spaced career she has had good runs at Grand Slams, some better than others. But hey, it does take a certain amount of skill and good results to get inducted into the tennis hall of fame, which she managed to do in 2013.
In her career, she played three 3 set Grand Slam finals. The best one being against Jana Novotná in the 1997 Wimbledon final. She ended up winning the rollercoaster with a convincing turnaround 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 convincing enough anyways. Hingis converted 5 break points in the match and saved 5 too, apart from that she slapped 41 winners compared to Jana’s 31.
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| Martina Hingis in 2006 |
Considered one of her best matches spectator-wise her match against Monica Seles in the 1997 edition of the French Open was quite an engaging match. Hingis won that tight semifinal match 6-7(2), 7-5, 6-4 over the third seed. She went on into the finals where she lost to Iva Majoli of Croatia 4-6, 2-6.
Hingis was a very good junior player too, she won her first junior Grand Slam at the tender age of 12 which is a record for men and women. She completed the feat in 1993 at the Roland Garros. She beat Laurence Courtois 7-5, 7-5 click the link to see where she is now. She went on to win the 1994 French Open and the 1994 junior Wimbledon, not only that but she also managed to add a 1994 French Open trophy to her cabinet at the age of 13.
A month after her US Open Junior Grand Slam final she entered her first professional tournament at the astonishing age of 14 in October of 1994, it was the Zurich Open where she beat then-world-number-45 Patty Fendickin the first round only to get knocked out in the second round (round of 16) by world number 5 Mary Pierce. In her next tournament in Germany Martini progressed to the quarterfinals before losing in a three-setter 6-0, 2-6, 6-7(5).It seems pretty inhuman to beat the world’s 54th best tennis player Marianne Werdel-Witmeyer 6-0 to me! She went into her third tournament ranked 120th in the world, where she went out in the quarterfinals. But she wasn’t going anywhere before she knocked out the 4th seed, world number 18 Sabine Hack 6-3, 6-0.
She ended up finishing her first pro year 87th in the world and with $26,625 dollars in her pocket which inflated is $43,977.24.
Speaking of money Martina Hingis has quite a hefty bank account, literally. In her career, she has earned 24,670,324 which if she converted into pennies would weigh 6,167,581 kilograms (yes I did research how much a penny weighs and did all the math.) Hingis has a reputation but so does her bank account she was the WTA’s top earner in 1997, 1998, 1999 and in 2000. Her best year for her pocket was 2000 where she earned $3,457,049. But her campaign in 1997 wasn’t too far behind where she earned $3,400,196.
Martina Hingis has had a wonderful 3 careers and she and her 25 Grand Slams will be missed greatly by all of the tennis world.
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