The WTA and Women’s Tennis Struggle With Challenges Both Physical and Emotional
Former World #1 and 4 time Grand Slam winner, Martina Hingis, talks to me about her relationship with Serena Williams at the 2017 WTA Finals and the struggles women face when playing at the highest level of professional tennis. She also discusses the physical and emotional challenges that face women when playing their best. She speaks about how she uses what she learned working with pro athletes to help her with her everyday life.
“You’re always going to have challenges to overcome with someone you love.”
This is the wisdom that comes from someone who is willing to share something personal and very, very moving. We’ve all been there, to some degree or another. However, Hingis’ story speaks volumes because it is a story of a woman who has overcome both her past and present to make it into a future she’ll be so proud of.
Hingis was a two-time World #1. At 16, she became the youngest player to ever win a Grand Slam tournament (the French Open in 1979 becoming the youngest to win a major at age 17). After she retired, she became very vocal about the struggles that women face at the highest level of professional tennis. Some of those struggles even reached the White House, where she spoke personally to President Donald J. Trump about these issues, which culminated with a meeting at the White House where Hingis helped with women’s tennis.
To put it in a nutshell, Hingis’s story is one that will touch your heart and you’ll wonder “How could that be?”
When discussing her upbringing, she said, “I didn’t have a father and my mother had two children by a different man. It didn’t make sense to me,” adding that her parents “weren’t close.”
Hingis was the kind of child