On and off court this year, Martina has been getting anything and everything she wants. The Slovakian-born, Swiss-raised star is undefeated for 1997 - through six tournaments and 31 matches. Already this year she has won more than $1 million. At the Australian Open, she didn’t lose a single set, while becoming the youngest winner of a Grand Slam event in more than a century. With her great smile and preternatural play, she has received sport’s highest compliment, a comparison to Tiger Woods. At that, Hingis laughs. “I think I’m even better than Tiger Woods,” she says with a twinkle in her eye that somehow manages to communicate both “I’m kidding” and “I’m perfectly serious.”
If there’s a flaw in her tennis, it’s her off-court love of horses. She rides whenever she can, and took a spill in April while cavorting near her home in mountainous eastern Switzerland. After the fall, she had minor knee surgery and hasn’t played a tournament for seven weeks. This week Hingis is expected to return for the French Open, the year’s second Grand Slam event. A win in Paris on the red clay at Roland Garros stadium would not only put her one up on Tiger Woods in majors but keep her on target to become only the sixth player, man or woman, to sweep the four Grand Slam tourneys in the same year. (Steffi Graf did it last in 1988.) “I’m not saying I am going to do it,” she says, “but I want to show the whole world that I’m a great player.”
And maybe revive her sport. A few decades ago, tennis was the cutting edge of women’s sports, flourishing with Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. But they faded and the game lost much of its luster. Steffi Graf and Monica Seles proved to be great talents, but with their unvarying power games, they helped transform tennis into a grim and grunting business. Hingis may change that. She wears her personality - not a swoosh - on her sleeve; she takes the court grinning, laughing, pouting and piquing (she has tossed a racquet or two). When one of her shots hits the net and trickles over a winner, she eschews the customary wave of apology and applauds the result. “People who don’t know me may think I’m arrogant,” she says. “But once they see me out on the court trying to be funny, they realize I’m just a normal 16-year-old girl who just happens to play a little better than other kids.”
Of course, very little “just happens,” especially to a young girl who was named by her parents, both top Czech players, after national hero Navratilova. They split up when Martina was 7, and she moved with her mother to Switzerland. Her mom told her so often that she would become “the best” that Martina couldn’t feign the requisite surprise when, at the age of 15, she won her first Grand Slam title, the 1996 Wimbledon doubles crown. “I was always sure it would happen - just not so fast,” she says. Hingis is hardly the first - only the best - teen phenom to be hyped as tennis’s salvation. “I hate to rave about a 16-year-old because I’ve raved about too many of them,” says Bud Collins, tennis’s longtime TV guru. “But this one is truly exceptional.”
So, too, apparently, is her relationship with her “mother, best friend, coach,” Melanie Molitor. Tennis, perhaps more than any other sport, has demonstrated the perils of overinvolved parents. Thus far Martina’s intensely close relationship with Melanie has been a source of strength; there are no public signs of Mommie Fiercest behavior. “Above all we must save the friendship,” Melanie says. Molitor bristles at the notion that she has somehow conspired to steal Martina’s childhood. She wonders if people think Hingis would be happier playing with dolls - or, she adds, astutely mocking American political correctness, with race cars. “Martina is not missing anything,” she says. “We like what we’re doing.”
One reason Martina likes what she’s doing is that, unlike so many teen gym or rink rats, she does so much. During the Australian Open, she went to theater, during the French to the Louvre and Notre Dame, and during the U.S. to Saks and Donna Karan. While in Chicago, Hingis Rollerbladed along Lake Michigan, and she’ll saddle up at any opportunity. “Tennis is not my life,” she says. “I would get bored very soon if I would think just about tennis.”
Indeed if her mother didn’t push her, Hingis admits, she’d barely practice. As it is, she never practices more than a couple of hours a day. By modern tennis standards, Martina, at 5 feet 6 and 115 pounds, is neither big nor particularly powerful. Her game mixes power with finesse. But tennis experts say it is her court intelligence, nearly impeccable judgment in shot selection, that is Hingis’s most singular weapon.
Martina appears popular with her peers, but there is also some obvious resentment of the cheeky champ. “Everything is going well for her now, but one day it will turn around,” says Barbara Rittner, a veteran German pro. But probably not any day soon. Hingis is so self-assured that she recently said no to her own management agency, IMG, when it proposed pairing the two Martinas in doubles at a Grand Slam event. “Too much pressure,” she said.
But the real pressure, perhaps at the French or at next month’s Wimbledon, will likely be provided by Graf. Steffi, who relinquished the No. 1 ranking while recuperating from a knee injury, is hardly over the hill at 27, and Hingis has beaten her only once in six tries. This time, “I think Steffi will see me as a different person,” says Hingis. “I think she’ll be a little afraid.” Fear and, inevitably, a little loathing add the spice to rivalry, which is just what tennis desperately needs.
