Martina Hingis

Martina Hingis was born on September 30, 1980 in Košice, Czechoslovakia, now Slovakia. She is a former World No. 1 Swiss tennis player. Known as the "Swiss Miss", she has won five Grand Slam singles titles (three Australian Open, one Wimbledon, and one US Open). She has also won nine Grand Slam women's doubles titles, winning a calendar year Grand Slam in 1998, and one Grand Slam mixed doubles title. She spent a total of 209 weeks as World No. 1 and set a series of "youngest-ever" records before ligament injuries in both ankles forced her to withdraw from professional tennis at the relatively early age of 22.
On November 29, 2005, after several surgeries and long recuperations, the 25-year-old Hingis announced that she would return to the WTA tour, starting her professional comeback at a low-key tournament in Gold Coast, Australia in January 2006. Since then, Hingis has climbed to No. 6 in the world rankings, won three titles (at the Tier I tournament in Rome, the Tier III tournament in Kolkata, India, and the Tier I tournament in Tokyo), was the runner-up in three tournaments (Tier I tournaments in Tokyo and Montreal and the Tier III in Gold Coast), and qualified for the 2006 WTA Tour Championships in Madrid.
She was engaged to fellow tennis player Radek Stepanek but they have since split up. She has been coached by her mother, Melanie Molitor, a former tennis pro. However, she currently does not have a coach.
Childhood and Early Career
Martina Hingis was born to two accomplished tennis players: a Czech mother, Melanie Molitorová, and a Hungarian-Slovak father living in Košice (Slovakia), Karol Hingis (Károly Hingis in Hungarian). Molitorová once ranked No. 10 among women in Czechoslovakia. Her father who was rated even number 19 in the tennis rankings of Czechoslovakia is today a tennis trainer in Košice. They named their daughter 'Martina' (originally Martina Hingisová) after Martina Martina Navratilova. Hingis' parents divorced when she was a young girl. She moved with her mother to Moravia for a short period, then to Switzerland.
Martina Hingis began hitting tennis balls when she was two years old and entered her first tournament at age four. In 1993, 12-year-old Hingis became the youngest player to win a Grand Slam junior title: the girls' singles at the French Open. In 1994, she retained her French Open junior title, won the girls' singles title at Wimbledon, and was ranked the World No. 1 junior player.
She made her professional debut in October 1994, two weeks after her 14th birthday. In 1995, she became the youngest player to win a match at a Grand Slam tournament when she advanced to the second round of the Australian Open.
Martina Hingis was twice rated among FHM magazine's 100 sexiest women, and her championship doubles partnership with tennis' glamour girl Anna Kournikova (two Grand Slam championships) in the late 1990s and early-2000s attracted a great deal of attention. Jestingly, they announced that they were "The Spice Girls of Tennis."