Portal:Tennis/Selected biography/09 2007
Martina Hingis (born September 30, 1980) is a Swiss professional singles and doubles tennis player who was active on the WTA Tour between 1994 and 2003 and who returned to professional competition in 2005 after an injury-induced retirement; she is widely regarded as amongst the best players of her generation . Hingis, born in Košice, Czechoslovakia, to a tennis trainer father and a tennis player mother and named for Czech-American Martina Navrátilová, began playing tennis aged two years and enjoyed early success, winning the girls' singles title at the 1993 Tournoi de Roland Garros to become the youngest-ever winner of a Grand Slam junior title and capturing the girls' singles events in 1994 at The Championships, Wimbledon and Roland Garros to earn the Women's Tennis Association's world number one rank. Having at the 1995 Australian Open become the youngest player ever to win a match at a Grand Slam tournament and having been honored as the Newcomer of the Year in the same year, Hingis partnered with Czech Helena Suková in the women's doubles tournament at the 1996 Wimbledon Championships, and the two overcame a first-set loss in the final tie to defeat Latvian Larisa Neiland and American Meredith McGrath to make Hingis, aged 16 years, the youngest player to hold a Grand Slam title. She fell to eventual champion first-seeded German Steffi Graf in the semifinals of the 1996 United States Open three months later but finally won her first WTA Tour singles title on carpet in Filderstadt, Germany, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, over German Anke Huber.