Martina Hingis And Magnus Norman

Martina Hingis

Martina Hingis turned pro at age 14 and quickly became one of the dominant tennis stars of the 1990s. In 1997 she nearly completed a rare Grand Slam, winning the Australian Open, the U.S. Open and Wimbledon and losing only in the French Open finals. Intensely competitive and a clever shotmaker, Hingis was ranked #1 in the world in women’s singles in 1997, 1998 and 2000 and by the end of the year 2000 she had career prize winnings of $15 million. For a time she was part of a high-profile doubles team with fellow teen sensation Anna Kournikova. In 2002 Hingis battled ankle injuries, and in 2003 she announced that she was retiring from competitive tennis. However, she unretired three years later, making her official return to professional tennis on 2 January 2006 in the Australian women’s hardcourt championships. She retired again in November 2007 after announcing that her urine sample had tested positive for cocaine at that year’s Wimbledon tournament; Hingis denied playing under the influence of the drug, but said “I have no desire to spend the next several years of my life reduced to fighting against the doping officials.”

Hingis’s mother has said that Martina was named for tennis star Martina Navratilova… Hingis was born in Slovkia (then Czechoslovakia) but moved to Switzerland in 1987 after her mother remarried… During her days at the top of the tennis rankings, Hingis had a few much-publicized feuds with the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena.

Hingis has dated Spanish golf player Sergio García and British footballer Sol Campbell. She was briefly engaged to Czech tennis player Radek Štěpánek, but split from him in August 2007. She has also dated former tennis players Magnus Norman, Ivo Heuberger and Julian Alonso. In March 2010, Hingis announced that she was engaged to marry Andreas Bieri, a Swiss attorney,but the engagement was broken off later.

Martina Hingis tied the knot on December 10, 2010 as she married fellow showjumper, 24 year-old Thibault Hutin, in an intimate ceremony in Paris.

Hingis was renowned for her tactical approach to the game of tennis and for her technical skills, enabling her to produce a wide array of shots with finesse. She lacked the power possessed by many of her contemporaries; therefore, she relied on low error-rates and good shot selection to keep opponents off-balance. She often used change of direction and pace to catch opponents off guard and sharp angles to open up the court. She was also well known for her ability to break long rallies by hitting accurate drop shots and coming to the net, where she was a skilled volleyer. A signature play of Hingis was the drop shot followed by a lob, often resulting in an easy volley or overhead to finish the point. Hingis often hit the ball extremely early by standing close to the baseline (or inside it) in order to take reaction time away from her opponent because she did not have sufficient power to hit winners past her opponents.

Sports Illustrated Yearbook 2001

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2009

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Sports Illustrated 2000, Sports Almanac