It’s an odd time for a Martina Hingis retrospective. At the moment, our vision of her is colored—tainted—by her recent, mysteriously sudden second retirement after a positive cocaine test. Maybe these two clips will help put her back in perspective. More than with any of the other players I’ve watched on YouTube over the last two weeks, I’d forgotten what Hingis did well. Or, I should say, I’d forgotten all the different things she did well.
Aside from her re-retirement, there’s also a tendency right now to see Hingis in a negative light, as an “in-between” champion who snuck five majors in during the late 1990s, after the demise of one power era—the Graf-Seles edition—and before the rise of the next—the Williams-Williams-Davenport-Sharapova era. And that’s true. But we can also feel good, after watching her dissect her opponents in these clips, that her reign was one where variety, finesse, and instinct were allowed to flourish. Unfortunately, the second of these two videos will show that this queen was brought down not just by the bullying power of her bigger opponents, but by her own immaturity.
Above is the 1997 Wimbledon women’s final. Hingis, 17, defeated Jana Novotna, 2-6, 6-3, 6-3.
—Remembering how dominant Hingis was in ’97, when she won three majors and was a match away from the Grand Slam, it’s bittersweet now to think that she would win only two more, both in Australia. During the trophy ceremony, John Barrett talks about what a great, Graf-like future Hingis may have.
—Hingis was a grinder with flair. Like Nadal, her forte was accuracy—she could hit 100 straight balls in if needed—but like Federer she owned every shot and hit them all with a deceptive lack of effort.
—In these 9 minutes, she serves and volleys, hits two topspin lob winners, cracks a powerful backhand return, moves her opponent out of position with a looped forehand into the corner, uses a two-shot combination on the passing shot (just like they teach you), and wins a point with an expert drop shot and equally good lob.
—The most impressive aspect of Hingis’ strokes is their simplicity. They may be textbook, but they look unconstructed, born rather than made—of course they were the product of thousands of hours of practice, but that, paradoxically, is what allows them to be so simple. They all begin and end before you know it. That’s particularly true on her backhand side, where she absorbs all the pace of the ball coming in and sends it back with virtually no backswing.
—Novotna: weird service setup, with her racquet stuck out in front of her face.
—If I take away anything from Hingis’ technique for my own game, it’s her willingness to always get down for her strokes. She really shows that on one backhand pass here.
—Hingis’ reign of simple finesse was brief, but fans of her brand of tennis will always have her dominance of 1997 to remember.
Now it’s two years later, and the innocence is about to end. In what the winner would describe afterwards as “one of the craziest matches ever,” Hingis would implode and then serve for the match in the second set, before imploding for good in the third. Steffi Graf would walk away with her 22nd and final major title, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2. Hingis would walk off the court to boos, and then return, in tears.
There are at least two full version of this match, in separate parts, on You Tube, but there are no condensed, single-clip highlights that I could find. I’ve chose part 2 of three of an ESPN Classic feed with Tony Trabert and an Aussie woman commentating (Rennae Stubs?). This one had the best quality. It covers most of the second set when Graf was turning the tables and the two had their most competitive points, but does not include the legendary meltdown moments, when Hingis crossed the net (you can find that here, though you don’t get to see Graf’s incredulous reaction) or threw in an underhand serve (find that here). I like the fact that Trabert defends that move.
—Graf-Hingis ’99 is not unlike the McEnroe-Nastase Thursday Night Massacre at the U.S. Open in 1979. Infamous for the behavior of one of the players—Hingis in this case; Nasty in that one—it also featured more than the normal allotment of entertaining, high-quality tennis, most of which has been forgotten. In this match especially, the drama of the points—up, back, slice, topspin, drop, lob, slide—matched the drama of the moment.
—As with the Novotna match, Hingis is a tennis highlight reel, hitting a swing volley winner, sneaking in for a delayed approach-and-volley winner, using the delicate drop-lob combination, defending with brilliant slides and stabs, and hitting a neat, un-textbook forehand approach winner without stopping.
—Hingis is the more complete player on this day and should have won the match. Even after multiple implosions, she managed to serve for it at 5-4 in the second set. Hingis forced Graf to try different things as the afternoon progressed. Graf got back into the match by mixing her shots up more than she normally does. She went to the drop shot and showed a lot of patience by working the points with her one-handed backhand. It was a necessity: She couldn’t blow Hingis off a clay court with her usual forehand patterns.
—Stick around for the point that begins just after the 4-minute mark.
—Knowing how this match ends, you can see that Hingis’ problems started early. Maybe she was jittery because she was playing Graf, the French fans' favorite, but even while she was cruising through the first set and a half, Hingis was unduly agitated and more adolescent than ever. It seemed at times as if she couldn't quite face winning the match, for some reason. She laughed after a Graf forehand winner; she pounded a ball into the court in the second set; she put her face against the court’s wall in exasperation even though there was another set to go; she blew her cool crossing the net, even if she was right; she baited the already angry crowd with two underhand serves; and she generally showed way too much emotion. As refined as her game was, Hingis, even after five Grand Slam titles, hadn’t matured into a champion. It caught up to her against the greatest champion of them all.
—The upside of this match is not just the play itself. It’s the sight of Graf letting her emotions out like she never had before. She’s unabashedly delighted to win one last Slam, which had been her wish. If we had to see Hingis experience this awful moment after playing playing so brilliantly, at least it gave us a chance to see Graf experience such a wonderful one after doing the same.