Martina Hingis won Grand Slams at Wimbledon, the US Open and Australian Open all in one year
Wimbledon star Martina Hingis in 2002(Image: Wireimage)
Wimbledon is in full swing and the grass courts in SW19 are serving up some fantastic entertainment.
This year’s stars, from Carlos Alcaraz to Novak Djokovic, have been moving through the gears as we head into the second week of the competition.
The tournament, with its own sense of traditionalism, brings with it a sense of nostalgia.
The 1990s will remain fixed in many tennis fans’ minds as a glory period for the sport, with some huge names dominating both the men’s and women’s game.
In the latter part of the decade, a young Swiss player came to the fore in a big way.
Martina Hingis, who was born in Czechoslovakia but emigrated to Switzerland when she was just six with her mother when her parents divorced.
She followed in her father’s footsteps and her tennis ability was identified at an early age, winning a French Open junior Grand Slam title at just 12 years old.
In 1996 she became the youngest Grand Slam champion of all time to win the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon aged just 15 and nine months.
In 1997, arguably the most successful year of her career, she became the world number one and recorded further Grand Slam success. taking the Australian Open title and Wimbledon in the singles. She finished the year by beating Venus Williams in the US Open final – meaning she held three of the four slams that year.
In total she would win three Australian Open Grand Slams (1997, 1998, 1999) and single titles at Wimbledon (1997) and the US Open (1997).
She would taste enormous success in the doubles, dominating in the women’s and mixed categories.
The early 2000s would see her career impacted by ankle surgeries and at the age of just 22 she announced her retirement from all tennis due to the pain she was enduring.
She endeavoured to make a comeback in 2005 but she never hit the heights of her early career at the baseline.
Martina Hingis playing at an invitational match at Wimbledon last year(Image: 2024 Getty Images)
In 2007 she was hit by scandal after testing positive for benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, during a urine test taken by players at Wimbledon. She appealed but was hit with a two-year ban.
The latter years of her doubles-only career saw plenty of success, winning four major women’s doubles tournaments, six major mixed doubles tournaments, 27 WTA Tour titles and the silver medal in women’s doubles at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
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She finally hung up her racket in 2017, but even now at 44, she looks like she could still do a job and had regularly been seen playing at invitational events in recent years.
Martina Hingis(Image: Eric Dubost/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Off the court, Hingis has been married twice.
She became engaged to fellow tennis star Radek Stepanek in 2006 but broke off their engagement a year later.
She then became engaged to Andreas Bieri, a Swiss attorney, in 2009, but again the couple called time on their relationship in 2010.
Hingis then tied the knot with French equestrian show jumper Thibault Hutin in December 2010 but their union would be shortlived, with the tennis star confirming to a Swiss newspaper in 2013 that they had been separated since the beginning of that year.
Their relationship breakdown played out in public.
The Daily Mail report Hingis was questioned by Swiss police after Hutin alleged he had been attacked by Hingis and her mother.
He also claimed Hingis’ mother’s boyfriend hit him with a DVD player in the assault. Both her mother Melanie Molitor and her mother’s boyfriend Mario Widmer were interviewed by police.
Five years later she married sports physician Harald Leemann in Switzerland in a secret ceremony.
On her 38th birthday she announced the couple were expecting, with their daughter, Lia, born on February 26, 2019. Unfortunately, the couple divorced in August 2022.
Following her retirement, Hingis turned to golf and has helped her mother run her tennis school, while she is also a brand ambassador for a number of tennis companies and still competes in invitationals.
“Just a little,” she told Swiss Health Magazine a few years ago about her taking up golf. “I do a lot of things bit by bit, but what I will never give up on is horses and skiing. And although I have many worries ahead of me, connected with having a child, I will make no concessions.
“I simply cannot do it. Of course, tennis will remain in my life; it is the closest and simplest activity for me. It would be too hard and unnecessary to start some other career… but concerning different hobbies, why not?
“Well, in the meantime, I will help my mother run her tennis school. One of our mentees has already become the best player in Switzerland at the age of 13. It is a pleasure for me to watch them training and making progress. And when I advise them and it reaps rewards, they rejoice. And I’m happy.”
She still keeps her eye on the current game and she offered some words of advice to Radacunu following her US Open success in 2023 concerning the number of coaching changes she has made to her team.
“If you have the right surroundings, I think that’s also really important,” she said.
“I never met her so I don’t know exactly what goes through the head. It’s incredible she was able to win the US Open and, all of the changes after that, I don’t think it was a great choice to do.
“When you win with someone, you usually continue, but I can’t judge what happened. It would be nice for her to find the way and to find her success again.
“She’s got the shots, she’s the whole package, but you still need the results. It’s not like one day you win the US Open and then that’s the rest of the life.”