For Martina Hingis, it's different. She's surrounded by reminders of the way she used to be. Reporters and fans remind her daily of past mistakes, past wins; the other day someone called her a "has-been" to her face. Early Thursday afternoon, Hingis found herself on a treadmill in Flushing Meadow warming up for her second-round match at the 2007 U.S. Open. Directly above and in front of her, hanging from the ceiling, was a blown-up poster of 16-year-old Martina Hingis holding the silver '97 U.S. Open trophy: Short girlish bob, white Sergio Tacchini sweatsuit with blue trim, the grin of someone operating at the absolute peak of a rare and transcendent talent. She pumped her legs. The machine beneath her hummed, and she had no choice but to stare at the image of her younger, better self. "I look really young," Hingis said.
She is 26 now. After a three-year retirement, Hingis came back to tennis last year in astonishing form. She won two tournaments, rose to seventh in the world, raised the possibility that, with the fractured state of women's tennis, she might be able to sneak in a Grand Slam title or two before leaving the game for good. This year she choked away a quarterfinal win over Kim Clijsters at the Australian Open, won her lone title of the year in Tokyo, then spiraled into a cycle of injuries -- hip, back, femur -- that dropped her down to No. 17.
On Thursday, Hingis went on to beat qualifier Pauline Parmentier, 6-2, 7-5, with her usual mix of lobs, dropshots and chessboard tactics. If nothing else, Hingis' mind still operates at a level most of her opponents can't imagine.
"Everybody knows I can be a dangerous player," she said. "They have to watch out for me. Of course they know my weaknesses: They try to overpower them. Everybody tries to shoot me off the court. I try to to hold on against it.
"I know what I can do and what I can't," Hingis continued. "I'm very realistic. I know where my chances are, and I know if I prepare myself the best, like last year, that there's only a few players who can beat me. But being injured the last three, four months -- that wasn't easy. I'm just trying to get myself back together now. I know when I train right and everything is falling into place, I'm still a dangerous floater. Nobody likes to see me on the other side. I try to take that as a positive."
Still, Martina Hingis: "Dangerous Floater" was hardly the label anyone -- including Hingis -- would've predicted for her. At 12, she was the youngest to ever win a junior Slam title. At 13 she was the youngest Wimbledon junior champ. In 1995 she hit the women's tour and, at 14, became the youngest to win a singles match in the Open era.
"It's always been that I was the best junior, the best here and there, all at a young age, and I've broken so many records over the years," she said. "So when you have a hiccup, when you've been [ranked] 15-20 for one year, you're like, 'Hey, what's going on? I should be up there with the top 10, winning tournaments.' Because you don't know anything else."
The moment she arrived, cheery and light-footed in an era of rampaging tennis fathers and teen burnouts, the 15-year-old Hingis drew gasps from the tennis cognoscenti. Billie Jean King called her "a genius"; Mary Carillo said that she'd seen only one other pro, John McEnroe, play with such a vivid tennis imagination. Monica Seles raved that she had never seen anyone with such court sense, spoke of how, as her one-time doubles partner, she could actually see Hingis thinking in mid-point. Blessed with average speed and sometimes a laughable lack of power, Hingis saw the court better, thought levels deeper than anyone else, and that alone gave her the time and space needed to overcome the faster, stronger girls.
At 16 Hingis won the 1997 Australian Open to become the youngest Grand Slam titlist in a century. Within months, she had become the youngest No.1 ever. She went on to win three of the next four Slam events, on top of the game, and it quickly became clear that she was different there, too.
You know, in the development of a person, it's not a good thing to need winning that badly -- like Billie Jean and I did, or Martina or Steffi," Chris Evert, Hingis' one-time mentor, once told me. "Martina Hingis is a very well-rounded individual, and she's got a more easy-going nature than the rest of us. The question is, do you want your child to become No. 1 and be a pain-in the-neck and a cocky egomaniac and everything else that goes along with being No. 1? Or do you want a well-balanced child, more easy-going? I've always liked Martina. The first thing she said at our mentor meeting was, 'Let me see pictures of your boys. Let me see a picture of your husband. How's your life?' Everything was about me. It wasn't just about her, her, her."
Yet, almost just as quickly, Hingis revealed a mean streak behind that grin. She feuded with one-time doubles partner Jana Novotna, insulted Graf and called admitted lesbian Amelie Mauresmo "half a man." She engaged in spats with pinup doubles partner Anna Kournikova, basically accused the Williams sisters of playing the race card and said their father had a "big mouth." She acted like a petulant brat at the '99 French Open, squandered her last good chance at a Grand Slam title. Detractors on tour called Hingis "Chucky" after the homicidal movie doll, but she had already turned her attention elsewhere. After Hingis discovered boys, her tennis never was the same.
In 2002, I spent a few days in Switzerland with Hingis and her mother and coach, Melanie Molitor. Hingis was just on the cusp of her first retirement then because of chronic foot problems, involved with golfer Sergio Garcia, and facing the first true challenge of her life with a strange equanimity. Molitor, who strung her daughter's rackets, a task she loathed but did for three hours nightly, despaired constantly of ever being able to instill just a bit of her own will to win in her daughter. By the time I arrived, she'd all but given up.
"The only thing I can do is try to help Martina to play as good as possible, so she doesn't get close to needing that drive," Molitor said then. She described an athletic makeup unlike any other, a champion with almost no intrinsic need to dominate her opponent. "Martina, she likes the moment. It's a very important point: When Martina's on the court, with a match in her hand, she doesn't think how it will be in 10 minutes or a half hour," Molitor said. "She doesn't care. She's having fun. It's just a game for her."
I took Molitor's remarks as gospel, and wasn't surprised when Hingis seemingly left the game for good. But I also ignored something Hingis told me at the time: "Tennis was always something I could hold onto. I could always come back to the game. That's where I felt strong and safe."
There were times this year when Hingis asked herself, Do I still need to do this? But then comes a day like Thursday, facing a small challenge and still winning.
"Who knows how long it's going to be out there for me?" Hingis says. "It's not going to be another five, 10 years. So you take the moment: Just winning, or on match point when you're tossing the ball, or the last time I hit the backhand down the line into the corner, and I'm like, 'Wow, cool. This is worth all the fighting and running.' Especially on occasions like this. In New York."
How long can it last? Hingis will be 27 next month. She has run through a string of boyfriends, in and out of the game, the latest a broken engagement with Czech pro Radek Stepanek. She doesn't have much to say about that, except that she's ready now to focus on herself, alone again, and putting on blinders to concentrate solely on the game. "It helps," she says, "Winning now again."
She's into the third round here in New York, down in the weaker half of the draw. She takes inspiration from -- of all people -- the Williams sisters and their sudden championship runs at this year's Australian Open and Wimbledon. "It gives me hope," she says, but Hingis is smart enough not to predict a thing. She sees the younger girls, 17 and ready to run all day. "I see the freshness, the hunger, all that," Hingis says. "That's how I used to be."
Come tomorrow she'll be back on the treadmill, running, and maybe that's enough. Hingis will be able to look up at that poster again, after all, and see what few of us know: How it is to be young and happy and sure that you'll never lose.
SL PRICE
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