Martina Hingis announces retirement

Singapore : Martina Hingis announced yesterday that she will retire from tennis at the end of this week’s WTA Finals, where she is playing in the doubles tournament with Chan Yung-Jan.

“Looking back now, it’s hard to believe that almost exactly 23 years ago I made my professional debut,” Hingis, 37, said on her Facebook
page.

“The years that followed have been some of the most rewarding years of my life, both personally and professionally, but I believe the time has come for me to retire, which I will be doing after my last match here in Singapore.”

The retirement will be Hingis’s third in a long and illustrious career during which she claimed 25 Grand Slam titles — five in singles, seven in mixed doubles and 13 in women’s doubles.

Hingis first decided to end her career as a 22-year-old in 2003 because of persistent injuries after picking up all five of her major singles titles as a teenager. She won three Australian Opens, one Wimbledon and one United States Open from 1997 to 1999.

She returned to the tour in 2006, and although she found more success in doubles than singles, she retired for a second time a year later after testing positive for cocaine.

Hingis returned to the sport in 2013 and has enjoyed another successful spell of doubles tennis, winning four women’s doubles and six mixed doubles titles at Grand Slam events over the last three seasons.

“I think now it’s definite,” she said of her latest retirement. “So it’s different, because before I was, like, O.K., I walked away, thinking I might come back, and if I didn’t, so that was it. So it’s a different way now and I think it’s the right thing to do this time around.”

Hingis and Chan, who are ranked No. 1 in doubles, opened their WTA Finals campaign Thursday with a 6-3 6-2 quarterfinal victory over Anna-Lena Grönefeld and Kveta Peschke, following which the Swiss elaborated on the decision to end her playing career.

Hingis said she told Chan early in the season, when they became a team, that this would probably be her last
year.

Hingis has won 43 singles and 64 doubles titles, including nine in women’s doubles this year. She won the U.S. Open with Chan, and took the Wimbledon and U.S. Open mixed doubles trophies with Jamie Murray.

She also spent 209 weeks as world No. 1, has won the season-ending WTA Finals twice in singles and three times in doubles, and claimed a 2016 Olympic silver medal in women’s doubles with her Swiss compatriot Timea Bacsinszky.