Amid an alleged failed drug test that would have her banned from tennis for at least two years, Martina Hingis called a press conference to announce her retirement from tennis. The former tennis teen prodigy, now 27, in the midst of a comeback the past few years angrily denied allegations that she had used cocaine, but said she would rather retire than go through a lengthy legal battle to clear her name.
Sadly then ends the era of one of the best tennis players of the late 90’s. Even sadder still is the fact that just last year we were hailing the comeback efforts of this former queen of tennis. Last year we watched the former number one ranked player in the world make a successful return to the game she had left behind due to reoccurring injuries. It was a year which saw the Swiss Miss make her first finals since leaving the game. In the process she took down tennis reigning starlet Maria Sharapova 6-3, 6-1, in the finals of the Pan Pacific Open.
For a while at least, she gave us a feel good story. Here was a former Wimbledon champion, who had fallen from grace due to injuries and a prickly attitude, regaining some of her former luster against the best of the game. But it was just another chapter in our love-hate relationship with this former tennis superstar.
We had watched her dominate women tennis since her teens, when she won five Grand Slam titles. We had seen her become the youngest winner of a Grand Slam event when she won the Australia Open at the age of sixteen. That same year (1997) she was also Wimbledon champion and became the youngest number one ranked player in tennis history. It was a position she would hold for a total of 209 straight weeks. It was nothing short of a meteoric rise.
But like anyone who grows under the media driven international spotlights, there were family spats, and tantrums along the way. Then came the injuries and the ankle surgeries that kept her from being able to compete at the level she was accustom too. Finally by 2002, at the young age of 22 she was done. She retired from the game. Left to ride her beloved horses and take college classes back home in Switzerland. For a while she was forgotten.
In 2005 she came back to the sport she loved, and like most former champions that take to the comeback trail, we loved her again. She climb as high as 7th in the world ranking, and had us believing that perhaps there was one more Grand Slam win in her yet. Then came the press conference, and the announcement that she was going away again. With it came the angry denouncement against the allegations of drug used. Sadly, it was one more story of a great athlete involved in yet another scandal, so much for the feel good story. It is goodbye to the Swiss Miss once again.
Well then, Godspeed Martina Hingis, and thanks for the memories nonetheless.
