Legend Bio: Martina Hingis

At 16 years, 3 months and 26 days, Martina Hingis became the youngest Grand Slam champion of the 20th century by winning the 1997 Australian Open. The victory heralded a season of youthful dominance, during which the "Swiss Miss" captured three of the four major titles — Wimbledon and the US Open, in addition to her Melbourne triumph — and ascended to the World No.1 ranking. She is still the youngest player ever to hold the top spot.

The previous year, Hingis had become the youngest Grand Slam titlist in history, when she teamed with Helena Sukova to win the doubles at Wimbledon at 15 years, 9 months. During that 1996 season Hingis also won the first of her 43 singles titles at the Filderstadt event near Stuttgart and advanced to the final on debut at the season-ending championships, extending Steffi Graf to five sets. 

Her 1997 campaign, which ultimately yielded 12 titles and a .938 winning percentage, remains one of the most commanding single seasons in the sport's history. But Hingis, who was coached by her mother Melanie Molitor and named in honor of Martina Navratilova, was just getting started.

Over the next two years, her Grand Slam collection grew to five singles titles, as she added back-to-back Australian Open trophies in 1998 and 1999. She twice captured the WTA Finals, in 1998 and 2000.  

Between 1997 and 2002 she reached a total of 12 Grand Slam finals, including six in a row in Melbourne. Only Roland Garros proved elusive in her quest for a career Grand Slam — she was surprised by Iva Majoli in the final of 1997 and lost a tough three-setter to Graf in 1999, when the German great won her last major.

Up against big-hitting rivals including Lindsay Davenport, Monica Seles, Mary Pierce, Jennifer Capriati and Venus Williams, Hingis drew on her innate court craft, timing and touch to also enjoy success on the biggest WTA stages, from Indian Wells and Miami, to Montréal and Rome.

Injuries led to an initial retirement in early 2003, at the age of 22, but Hingis mounted a celebrated comeback in 2006, winning two more singles titles, her first mixed doubles major at the Australian Open, and returning to the Top 10. After capturing her fifth and final Tokyo title in 2007, she retired for the second time and was duly inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2013.

More was to come, however, as Hingis came out of retirement later that year to launch a final, spectacular chapter exclusively in doubles.

By that point she was already a nine-time major doubles champion who had completed a calendar-year Grand Slam in 1998, partnering Mirjana Lucic in Melbourne and Jana Novotna at the other three events. She had also won the WTA Finals in 1999 and 2000 with Anna Kournikova, a partnership that fans referred to as the Spice Girls. 

Now in her thirties, in this final phase of her career Hingis won four doubles majors with Sania Mirza and Latisha Chan, and a third WTA Finals title with Mirza in 2015. In January 2016 she regained the doubles No.1 ranking for the first time in 15 years, 10 months — the longest between stints at the top in rankings history. With Timea Bacsinszky she won a silver medal for Switzerland at the Olympics in 2016. She also added six mixed doubles titles before hanging up her racquets at the WTA Finals in Singapore in 2017.

All up, Hingis compiled a career record of 548 wins against 135 losses in singles and held the No.1 ranking for 209 non-consecutive weeks. She was the year-end No.1 in 1997, 1999 and 2000. In doubles, she won 64 titles and held the No.1 ranking for 89 weeks. For 27 non-consecutive weeks, she simultaneously held the top spot in both singles and doubles.

Her technical — and tactical — mastery and competitive longevity, which saw her win 25 major titles over three distinct eras at the summit of the game, cemented a unique legacy in tennis history.

Her daughter, Lia, was born in 2019.