Martina Hingis, Czechoslovakia-born Swiss tennis player
Martina Hingis (German pronunciation: [marˈtiːna ˈhɪŋɡɪs]; born Martina Hingisová; 30 September 1980) is a Swiss former professional tennis player. She is the first Swiss player, male or female, to win a Grand Slam and attain a No. 1 ranking. She spent a total of 209 weeks as the singles world No. 1 and 90 weeks as doubles world No. 1, holding both No. 1 rankings simultaneously for 29 weeks. She won 5 Grand Slam singles titles, 13 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, winning a calendar-year women's doubles Grand Slam in 1998, and 7 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, for a combined total of 25 major titles. In addition, she won the season-ending WTA Finals two times in singles and three times in doubles, an Olympic silver medal, and a record 17 Tier I singles titles.
Hingis set a series of "youngest-ever" records during the 1990s, including youngest-ever Grand Slam champion and youngest-ever world No. 1. Before ligament injuries in both ankles forced her to withdraw temporarily from professional tennis in early 2003, at the age of 22, she had won 40 singles titles and 36 doubles titles and, according to Forbes, was the highest-paid female athlete in the world for five consecutive years, 1997 to 2001. After several surgeries and long recoveries, Hingis returned to the WTA Tour in 2006, climbing to world No. 6, winning two Tier I tournaments, and also receiving the Laureus World Sports Award for Comeback of the Year. She retired in November 2007 after being hampered by a hip injury for several months.
In July 2013, Hingis came out of retirement to play the doubles events of the North American hardcourt season. During her doubles comeback, she won four Grand Slam women's doubles tournaments, six Grand Slam mixed doubles tournaments (completing the Career Grand Slam in this discipline), 27 WTA titles, and the silver medal in women's doubles at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Hingis retired after the 2017 WTA Finals while ranked world No. 1.Widely considered an all-time tennis great, Hingis was ranked by Tennis magazine in 2005 as the 8th-greatest female player of the preceding 40 years. She was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by TIME in June 2011. In 2013, Hingis was elected into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and was appointed two years later the organization's first ever Global Ambassador.