Well, Martina Hingis’s run at the Australian Open is over; she was beaten by Kim Clijsters today, in a way that blew up a few pearls of conventional wisdom. The only lesson I mined from the entertaining clash was that Hingis is capable of competing at the highest level with the strongest of players. She played brave, positive, creative tennis all the way—much more so, in fact than Clijsters.
How can you not love this firekitten?
For all the things that have been said and written about Hingis’s second serve, it seemed to me that Clijsters first serve was a bigger factor—she often had Hingis playing from back on her heels to start rallies. And Clijsters didn’t really feast on Hingis’s puffball deliveries. Clijsters got off to a great start, but forgot how to speak the game and unloaded a mortifying number of clunkers in the middle portion of the match. Hingis maintained a pretty high level throughout, but not—and this indicated her lack of match toughness—at the most critical of times, like at the start of the decisive set, when she had Clijsters reeling.
What you had, though, in the big picture, was a battle between a muscular, rough ball-banger and an artful, versatile shot-maker—or, to put it another way, between a big strong athlete who plays tennis and a woman blessed with a unique sensibility and talent for the specific game of tennis. You want to compare Hingis to someone? Try Roger Federer.
This may seem extreme, and there’s no question that Hingis has proportionately less power than the Mighty Fed. But Hingis and Federer are more fully realized players, in all departments, than their peers. They’ve got a pure strain of the tennis DNA.
Hingis was in a great mood after the match; she was beaming in the press interview room, and admitted to feeling a touch of relief to go along with her satisfaction—relief that she was able to make a match of it after a rocky start (she fell behind, 0-4). You could see how much this tournament meant to her. This is her version:
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is I like about Hingis, and a big part of it is her courage. Look, I’m not nominating her for the Congressional Medal of Honor or anything, but Hingis is a fighter. She battles with class. No histrionics (shrieks, fist pumps, fiery glances toward the coaching box, incessant cries of “Allez!”, etc. etc.). No playing to the crowd. No melodramatic embellishments. There’s a kind of beauty, honesty, and integrity to the way she competes, and it sends the message: I’m OK with this. I am Martina Hingis. This is what I do.
It’s funny, but at times in the past, when the light fell across Hingis a certain way, you could still see vestiges of the freak—the prodigy with the whacky, overbearing mom—the player doomed, like most prodigies, forever to be half-woman, half-child. It was there in her cockiness (imagine the 12-year-old who attends Princeton), it was there in her preternatural maturity, it was there in her love of the limelight.
But she appears to have matured and developed a more complex identity. I think her urge to make a comeback had something to do with letting go of the child half for good. I thought her reply was telling when Chris Clarey asked if she gets more pure enjoyment out of the game now than before:
In a way, that’s the best part of this saga, stretching all the way back to the day Martina retired. It’s been interesting and uplifting to watch her grow. It’s great to have her back.