When I first got interested (now addicted) to tennis, the player I liked the most was Venus Williams. She looked like me and was beginning to utterly dominate her opponents. Except Martina Hingis. Whom I did not like.
My first memory about Hingis involved Venus’ beads. You might recall that Venus was having a bit of trouble with the hair situation back in the ‘90s. Her beads would fall out, which would lead to point penalties. This happened against Hingis at a tournament in 1997, and she (get this) walks into the press conference with one of Venus’ beads and tossed it out to reporters. As a present, she said. So I did not like Martina Hingis.
As a side note, you know who else I didn’t like was Lindsay Davenport. Lindsay Davenport is an American, like the Williams sisters, and she was out there in the media talking about how she and Hingis have formed a united front against one of my all-time favorite players. (Hingis is from another country. Hi, Lindsay!)
You know, I only started liking Martina Hingis when the sisters Williams, especially Venus, were able to turn the tide and beat Hingis. I liked watching Serena Williams win her first U.S. Open title against Hingis. Didn’t mind too much when she’d have to pull out of a tournament with injury. (That sounds mean, but so does throwing out my favorite player’s beads at a press conference to mock her.) It was quite satisfying to watch Hingis leave the court in tears when she lost the French Open.
I liked making fun of her as she played as often as possible, trying to gather up enough points to hold on to her No. 1 ranking. That was because she was falling more often to the power players of the time.
If my petty levels were set just a bit higher back then, I might have noticed that Hingis was actually a very good player. She was smart and survived on guile against players who relied on power far more than she should have. She used all of the court. She was three moves ahead of her opponent for most of her early career and it would have been amazing to watch.
If I had liked her. And I did not.
The first time she retired in 2003, due to injury, I was good with it. Didn’t miss her for a second. My girl Venus had finally started winning Grand Slams. Then Hingis came back a couple of years later and it was time for a new round of fun for me, watching her lose to my new favorites – Kim Clijsters and Victoria Azarenka.
I admit I tittered a little bit when she retired yet again, prompted by a two-year drug suspension. Even still, it was too bad, I thought, that her career might be defined by such a black mark. But c’est la vie, correct? Don’t do the line if you don’t want to do the time.
By the time, she had returned to the game in 2013 (the year she was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame), she was focused on playing doubles, a game I had begun to enjoy myself as a recreational player. I preferred singles, but any pickup match I played at my local courts was usually doubles. No one wanted to play singles except me, so I played doubles.
Doubles, in case you don’t play tennis, isn’t like singles. In singles, it’s all on you, which seems easy enough. You set the strategy and considering who my favorite player was at the time, my plan usually involved hitting the ball as hard as I could. That didn’t always go well. But I did not like doubles at first. You can hit the hardest, but it doesn’t always mean you’ll win. Now, instead of one person, you have to navigate the court with two people, plus another person on your side whose job, it appears, is really to get in your way. But I also didn’t understand doubles. So I lost at doubles a lot and I was trying to figure out how to play it. I was tired of losing in doubles to the same people.
So anyway, Martina Hingis. She returned again in 2013 and I assumed she was doomed to fail. How could it go any other way? I mean, she still had her same powderpuff serve!
She didn’t fail. She taught Sania Mirza how to play doubles. That’s my opinion. But I think I can back it up. Just watch Mirza in doubles before Martina and watch her now. They were utterly dominant – in 2015, they started a run of three straight doubles titles, starting with Wimbledon. I know because I watched all of it.
Right now, in fact, as I write, I’m watching Hingis’ last match again – her alleged last match. I don’t quite believe she’s quitting, because I don’t like that she is.
I know. I know.
But things change. People change. For instance, I really enjoy doubles now. It’s a lot more challenging than singles. So many angles, strategies, options. Did you know you can win a match without trying to hit the cover off the ball? You can lob, use drop shots (even off of service returns. Sorry) and vary ball pace to keep your opponent off-balance. It’s actually more fun than singles, I think. I’m not totally sure. I haven’t played singles in at least a year.
People change. And when you change, you start to appreciate some things more than you used to. For example, you note how difficult it must be to return to a public stage after a degree of humiliation after a failed drug test. It must be harder still to do that and come back to cement your status and make even more history than you did when you were 15. You appreciate just how boss it is to end your career among the best players in your game – with you on top as No. 1. Again.
You also realize that you’re actually older by a few years than Hingis, which means that yes, tossing beads to mock someone is childish, but she was a child. You also realize that there is at least one person willing to forgive that transgression, so maybe you could get over it, too.
Still, it would be a stretch to say that I like Martina Hingis. But I learned a lot while hate-watching her matches – that the serve isn’t everything (but honestly, girl, you could have worked on that serve. Look at Justine Henin), that although tennis is a physical sport, it is also 99.962 percent mental, that doubles tennis is not inferior to singles, that one stumble doesn’t have to define a career, or a life. That’s all up to you.
So thanks, Martina. Happy retirement. Please, please go do something about that serve.
