Belinda Bencic, Swiss tennis player
Belinda Bencic (Slovak: Belinda Benčičová, pronounced [ˈbelinda ˈbentʂitʂɔʋaː]; born 10 March 1997) is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 4 by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) which she achieved in February 2020. Bencic has won five singles titles, including a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and two doubles titles on the WTA Tour.
Born in Switzerland to Slovak parents at a time when another Slovak-Swiss player Martina Hingis was one of the best tennis players in the world, Bencic began playing tennis at the age of two. Her father arranged for her to train with Hingis's mother and coach Melanie Molitor daily from the age of seven. By the time she was 16, Bencic became the No. 1 ranked junior in the world and won two junior Grand Slam singles titles at the French Open and Wimbledon. On the professional tour, she made her top 100 debut shortly after turning 17. Her first big breakthrough came at the 2014 US Open, where she became the youngest quarterfinalist since Hingis in 1997. Bencic won her first two WTA Tour titles in 2015, including the Canadian Open where she defeated four of the top six players in the world. She then made her top-ten debut the following year while still 18 years old.
From 2016 through 2018, Bencic struggled with a variety of injury issues, most notably needing to have wrist surgery in 2017 that kept her out for five months and saw her drop outside the top 300 in the WTA rankings. Nonetheless, she rebounded quickly and rose back into the top 50 within a year of her comeback. She then posted her best season to date in 2019, winning her second Premier-5 title at the Dubai Championships reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at the US Open, qualifying for her first WTA Finals where she reached the semifinals, and finishing the year inside the top 10 for the first time, which helped her win the WTA Comeback Player of the Year award.