Marion Bartoli had her best run of the year in March, when she made the finals at Indian Wells. She was feeling so confident during that week in the California desert that she revealed a secret about herself: She’s not only a world-class tennis player, she’s a genius.
During the tournament, Bartoli told French reporters that she has an IQ of 175, a fact that she confirmed to the U.S. media soon after. At the time, TENNIS.com noted that this number gave the Frenchwoman, previously best known for her extremely unorthodox playing and training styles, a higher intelligence quotient than Plato, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking, and left her in a tie with the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
“I hope to be that good in tennis one day,” Bartoli said, laughing. She said that she was still happy that she had taken up the sport. “Even when I was 6 or 7 years old, what was exciting me when I was waking up every morning, it was what I was doing after school: playing tennis against a wall.”
Why hadn’t Bartoli mentioned her prodigious intelligence before? “I’m not someone that is really telling everyone, ‘Oh, I’m so smart,’” she said modestly. “I’m kind of hiding it. But that’s how I am, you know. It just comes naturally. That how I was born.”
—Steve Tignor
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