/ 4 September 1998

Hingis slumps into US Open

Richard Jago Tennis

Martina Hingis made tennis history in a meteoric rise to the top of the women’s game. At the start of the year she led the rankings by 3E000 points and her position as number one seemed impregnable. Then in May she lost to Anna Kournikova in Berlin – and cracks began to appear in her edifice of invincibility.

Before the reverse, the 17-year-old Hingis had taken three Grand Slam titles and was the favourite to win the French Open and join Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova as the only women to hold all simultaneously. After it, she suffered a series of setbacks, and by last week her advantage had been cut to 444 points.

The most conspicuous were losses to Monica Seles in Paris and Jana Novotna in the Wimbledon semi-finals. Then she was beaten by Lindsay Davenport in San Diego, Mary Pierce in Carlsbad and Seles – again – two weeks ago in Toronto. The prodigy, who swept almost all before her for more than a year, has not won a title for three-and-a- half months.

At different times Hingis has appeared slightly overweight, slightly complacent, a little over-relaxed or a little under-motivated. She even admitted that in the final set against Pierce, she gave up.

Most serious of all, she may find it hard to justify her top seeding in the US Open, which began this week in Flushing Meadow; another Grand Slam title might easily slip through her fingers.

Hingis was cute enough at 16 to realise that her second year at the top might be more difficult than the first, because opponents would have had time to work out how to deal with her game. The psychology was different too. “It changed. I am now the hunted,” she says.

But even this cannot explain the stumblings of a player who had hurtled into the record books. The Swiss prodigy was three days younger than Lottie Dod 109 years before, when in 1996 she became the youngest Wimbledon winner, capturing the women’s doubles title at 15 years and 282 days old. The following year she became the youngest Wimbledon singles winner this century.

She was already the youngest player of the Open era to win a Grand Slam singles title, capturing the Australian Open at 16 years and three months, the youngest number one, and the first woman to earn more than $3- million in a season. Hingis was a quick learner, adapting so well to playing that she could win on any surface, and had the linguistic dexterity to give press conferences in four languages.

But this year Hingis has changed. She has been growing up and gaining independence. Next month, when she is 18, she will be legally qualified to drive the Porsche she earned while winning her first tournament in Filderstadt in 1996.

Affairs of the heart have also complicated the equation since she met Julian Alonso. The effect on the 21- year-old Spanish player with the pleasingly wide smile and one of the game’s fastest serves has been so debilitating that his coach Pato Alvarez’s predictions of a top-20 place have changed to warnings of decline.

It has affected Hingis too. (“It is wonderful to be in love for the first time,” she said recently.) Even before such distractions Hingis could be a reluctant practiser, preferring to prepare for big events by competing. The problem with such an approach is it is easy to have too little or too much.

This factor has been crucial. Hingis’s mobility is not exceptional and she does not have a hard-hitting game. When her great strengths – brains, ball control and an all-court game – are not supplemented by good court coverage she can be vulnerable. Seles, Venus Williams, Pierce and to a certain extent Kournikova, were able to beat her by imposing superior weight of a shot from the bassline.

Hingis accepted her defeat at Wimbledon with amazing cheerfulness, but it left a legacy of further lost confidence. The risk is that fear of a third big failure may inhibit her in New York.

ENDS